__NOTOC__ Bar Hercules, historically the Pillars of Hercules, was a

pub A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the late 17th century, to differentiate private ho ...

Greek Street Greek Street is a street in Soho, London, leading south from Soho Square to Shaftesbury Avenue. The street is famous for its restaurants and cosmopolitan nature. History It is thought to take its name from a Greek church that was built in ...

, Soho, London, originally named for the

Pillars of Hercules The Pillars of Hercules are the promontory, promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The northern Pillar, Calpe Mons, is the Rock of Gibraltar. A corresponding North African peak not being predominant, the identity of ...

of antiquity. Most of what exists was built around 1910, but the pub dates back to 1733. The road at the side of the pub through the arch is named

Manette Street Manette Street is a small street in the Soho area of London, linking the Charing Cross Road to Greek Street. Dating from the 1690s, and formerly named Rose Street, it is now named after the fictional character of Dr Manette in Charles Dickens ...

, after Dr Manette, one of the characters from ''

A Tale of Two Cities ''A Tale of Two Cities'' is a historical novel published in 1859 by English author Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long impr ...

'', who is described in the book as living near

Soho Square Soho Square is a garden square in Soho, London, hosting since 1954 a ''de facto'' public park leasehold estate, let by the Soho Square Garden Committee to Westminster City Council. It was originally called King Square after Charles II of Engla ...

. More recently, the pub has been favoured by many figures from the London literary scene, including

Martin Amis Sir Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter and critic. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and '' London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Mem ...

, Ian Hamilton,

Julian Barnes Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with ''The Sense of an Ending'', having been shortlisted three times previously with ''Flaubert's Parrot'', ''England, England'', and ''Arthu ...

and

Ian McEwan Ian Russell McEwan (born 21 June 1948) is a British novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of the ...

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Nick Drake Nicholas Rodney Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician. An accomplished acoustic guitarist, Drake signed to Island Records at the age of twenty while still a student at the University of Cambridg ...

is also said to have frequented the pub during his time in London, and theatre designer Sean Kenny drank there with his staff in the 1960s, their design studio being a few steps from the pub's back door. The critic James Wood includes an anecdote set in the pub in his study ''The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel'' (2004):

One London lunchtime, many years ago, the late poet and editor Ian Hamilton was sitting at his usual table in a Soho pub called the Pillars of Hercules. The pub was where much of the business of Hamilton's literary journal, ''The New Review'', was conducted. It was sickeningly early—not to be at work, but to be at drink. A pale, haggard poet entered, and Hamilton offered him a chair and a glass of something. "Oh no, I just can’t keep drinking," said the weakened poet. "I must give it up. It's doing terrible things to me. It's not even giving me any pleasure any longer." But Hamilton, narrowing his eyes, responded to this feebleness in a tone of weary stoicism, and said in a quiet, hard voice, "Well, none of us ''likes'' it."

The pub closed on 24 February 2018, reopening later in the year as Bar Hercules under new owners

Be At One BE or be may refer to: Linguistics * Be (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet * ''be'' (interjection), in several languages * Be languages or Ong Be, a pair of languages of northern Hainan province, China * Belarusian language, ISO 639- ...

. In 2022, the cocktail bar chain Simmons took over the pub.

Sources

References

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External links

Pillars Of Hercules
, Londonist. Accessed 10 September 2017. {{Pubs in London 1733 establishments in England Buildings and structures completed in 1733 Pubs in Soho Greek Street