Top pubs for St George's Day

St George's Day is as good an excuse as any for finding a great old traditional English pub and enjoying a pint of fine ale. We find the best of the old bars in London for you to sup one, or two.

The Marylebone Tup

93 Marylebone High Street, W1 (020-7935 4373). A bastion of English activism

The Charles Wells party bus will be rolling around town on Wed 23 Apr to celebrate all things English. The Bedford brewer and licensed house operator has long campaigned for St George's Day to be a national holiday, and the tour is designed to bring the day into public consciousness. The Marylebone Tup will be decked out appropriately for the occasion with flags and bunting galore.

Jamaica Wine House

St Michael's Alley, Cornhill, EC3 (020-7626 9496). An ancient traders' haunt

The party bus will also be visiting the Jampot, as locals affectionately refer to it, a pub which crops up again and again in the history of the City. In the early days it was a coffee house, London's first, before transmuting into a busy business exchange used by sea captains, rum and brandy merchants -anyone trading with the West Indies. It is, like many a City pub, tucked away up a medieval alley too narrow for traffic. Delivering the beer to it has always been a problem.

The George Inn

77 Borough High Street, SE1 (020-7407 2056). A typical coaching inn from the past

Coming across the George Inn for the first time is liking meeting an old friend. You feel you know it already from Christmas cards, Dickens and old movies. It is the archetypal coaching inn. You should really arrive in a stagecoach, but instead you park where you can, walk through the wrought-iron gateway on Borough High Street, and there it is - the cobbled yard, the overhanging galleries, all still in daily use. It is a moving sight. It was going strong in 1542, the year Henry VIII executed his fifth wife.

The Trafalgar Tavern
Park Row, SE10 (020-8858 2437). The grandest of grand old London

Pub is hardly the word for the Trafalgar Tavern, and neither is 'tavern'. Seat, perhaps, or hall would be better, so large is it, and imposing, with its parade of noble bars and its great ballroom on the floor above. They call this the Nelson Room, and it is a vast room of quite astonishing splendour. The Trafalgar was built in 1837 in this dashing Regency style to attract free-spending grandees from London.

The Britannia

1 Allen Street, W8 (020-7937 6905). Traditionally up-to-date

This early Victorian pub joined Young's brewery's excellent portfolio of pubs back in 1924 when the neighbouring Britannia brewery was pulled to make way for Allen Mansions. It has been much altered since - a conservatory at the back is on the site of the former stable block. It is every inch a contemporary interpretation of a traditional pub, serving delightful Young's ales and standard pub fare.