Pete Brown's engaging and irreverent social history takes the George pub in Southwark, London, as its subject. The capital's only surviving galleried coaching inn, it has seen all society pass through its doors, from highwaymen and prostitutes to royalty. It was immortalised by Dickens, a frequent visitor, in Little Dorrit, and may have adjoined the Tabard, the tavern from which Chaucer's pilgrims embarked on their Canterbury jaunt.

The approach that Brown adopts resembles Gillian Tindall's The House by the Thames, namely looking at how London and its people have changed over the centuries via the prism of one of the city's most famous and historic buildings. Since it was first built sometime in the 15th century (the date of foundation is keenly contested), the George has had an unusual longevity in an area where pubs are lucky to survive a generation, and Brown suggests that this is partly a result of good fortune, and partly hard-headed commercialism; certainly, its current incarnation, owned by the National Trust, is as much a tourist attraction as a place to get a drink.

Brown's rambunctious style, which frequently feels as if he's buttonholed you in the George itself to tell you an anecdote over a pint, might verge on the overbearing (and overfootnoted) in places, but he has countless fascinating stories to tell. Forgotten characters such as the fearsome early 20th-century pub proprietor Agnes Murray jostle for space with household names such as Samuel Pepys and, of course, Dickens. The only things that let this amiable book down slightly are the absence of an index, and the somewhat misleading title  as Brown himself admits, Shakespeare might have visited the George while in London, as many actors did, but his presence remains speculative, rather than documented in the pub's records. Nonetheless, the book succeeds in its aim, which is to make you visit the George and look at it afresh while enjoying a drink.