Good Cheer

All the elements of a classic English pub: dark wood, low beams, stone flags, horse brasses, an open hearth, hand-pumped ale on the bar, earthenware hanging from the ceiling, bare stonework. A carefully curated pastiche of what sits in our national consciousness as the archetype of an ale house. We are back in Great Tew, itself a pastiche of the perfect English village, about which I have written before

Whatever the contemporary veneer, The Falkland Arms is the genuine article - built in the early 17th century when the core of the village as it now stands was planned and constructed by its then lord, Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland. The Carys were from south-west England and played a prominent role in the occupation and subjugation of Ireland; odd that they should have been granted a Scottish title by James VI, but there it is; lordship of a royal burgh in the Lomond hills in Fife, applied to an Oxfordshire pub

Lucius Carey seems to have been a genuine intellectual, who collected around himself, in Great Tew, a 'circle' of cultured men to exchange literary and theological ideas. But he lived in violent, polarised times and was inevitably drawn into the Civil War. He fought for the king with distinction at Edge Hill and Worcester. However, he became despondent - he thought that whoever won the war, the country was destined for decline and misery. He could not accept parliament taking precedence over a king, but he thought Charles was a dreadful man and an appalling king. At Gloucester he took risks with his life, but was spared; at Newbury, he rode alone at a gap in a hedge from which enemy fire was coming, and was instantly cut down

The pub only took his name in the 19th century - it was formerly the more demotic Horse and Groom. But although I'm glad the aristocracy no longer has as much power as Lucius did, and that parliament now makes the laws, albeit with the monarch's formal assent, I'm happy to raise a glass of ale to the memory of a man who looked at both sides of a fractured society and found both intolerable