When you have lost your inns...

"When you have lost your inns," wrote the poet Hilaire Belloc in the 1930s, "drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.

According to the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), a staggering 26 pubs close every month. In the countryside, the 7,000 rural pubs that remain are closing at a rate of six a week. More than half of the villages in England are now "dry" - publess - for the first time since the Norman conquest.

Read about the whole terrible debacle here:

http://www.paulkingsnorth.net/Smoking.html