The Bull and Last has one of the best backstories of any pub name in London. For centuries before the railway network existed, the road north was served by coaching inns at regular intervals — and this was the final one before the city gave way to countryside. The coachmen's cry — "The Bull... and last!" — announcing the last stop before departure was so distinctive that it became the pub's permanent name. Today the wood-panelled dining rooms, roaring fires and striking taxidermy collection make it one of North London's most celebrated gastropubs, named in numerous Good Food Guide editions. A print for anyone who loves both the culinary and the historical dimensions of London's pub culture.

The Wells Tavern stands on Well Walk — a street named after the mineral springs that once made Hampstead one of London's fashionable spa destinations. The walk from the tube to the pub passes through some of Hampstead's most beautiful Georgian streets, and the pub itself — Grade II listed, handsome brick Georgian facade — is one of the most reliably good gastropubs in the area. The Sunday roast after a morning walk on the Heath has been a Hampstead institution for generations.

The Flask is one of those London pubs so embedded in its neighbourhood that it names the street it stands on. Flask Walk — a narrow, charming pedestrian lane of independent shops — is named after this pub, which took its name from the trade in bottled Hampstead mineral water (the "Lower Flask" to distinguish it from the now-closed Upper Flask further up the hill). The pub even earns a mention in the 18th-century novel Clarissa — one of the earliest references to a London pub in English literature. A Sunday afternoon on Flask Walk, ending at the Flask, is one of the better London afternoons available to anyone within Northern line distance.

The Hemingford Arms — "the Hemi" to everyone who knows it — has one of the richer community histories of any North London local. In the 1970s and 80s, when Islington was a mix of working-class tradition and countercultural energy, the Hemi was one of those rare pubs that welcomed everyone: punks who'd come down from the Kings Cross end, early gay and lesbian community groups who found in it a tolerance that many pubs of the era explicitly did not offer, and the ordinary Barnsbury residents who'd been drinking there for decades. Today the ivy-covered exterior is one of the most photographed pub fronts in Islington, and the interior remains as warm and unhurried as it always was.

Records refer to "the Redde Lyon" on St John Street as early as 1415, making this one of London's oldest continuously licensed pub sites — predating the Tudor era, predating printed books in England. In 1979, the upstairs boxing ring became a fringe theatre, and the Old Red Lion Theatre has since launched countless new plays and performers from its tiny 60-seat stage above the bar. The combination of six centuries of pub history below and four decades of fringe theatre above makes it one of the most distinctive cultural venues in London — a place where you can have a pint and then go upstairs to see a world premiere.

The Champion in Fitzrovia has one of London's most visually arresting pub interiors — spectacular stained-glass windows depicting Victorian "champions" including cricketer W.G. Grace, nurse Florence Nightingale and Matterhorn first-ascent climber Edward Whymper. The extraordinary detail is that these windows, which look entirely authentic to the Victorian era, were actually commissioned in 1989. The quality and craft are such that they read as genuinely period — a remarkable piece of late-20th-century craftsmanship that enhances rather than compromises the Grade II listed interior. A pub for anyone who loves the connection between Victorian celebrity culture and the names on a pub wall.

The Pride of Spitalfields is a rare thing in its area: a genuinely old, genuinely unmodernised local pub — with carpets, low ceilings and a warm amber light — in a neighbourhood that has changed radically around it. Formerly The Romford Arms, it has stood near Brick Lane for close to 200 years, and its connection to the Jack the Ripper case — witnesses said to have drunk here — adds a layer of Victorian East End history that sits uneasily but honestly alongside its CAMRA East London Pub of the Year 2013 award. Come here for the atmosphere of a proper boozer in a fast-changing part of the city.

Nicholas Culpeper (1616–1654) was the herbalist and physician who democratised medicine for ordinary Londoners — his Complete Herbal, published in English rather than Latin, made medical knowledge accessible to people who couldn't afford doctors. He lived and worked in the area around Spitalfields, and the pub named after him carries that tradition of accessible, community-focused purpose into the 21st century. A four-floor establishment with pub, restaurant and rooftop garden, The Culpeper is one of East London's most ambitious modern pub conversions, with a botanical aesthetic that directly references its namesake's herbal legacy.

The Royal Oak sits at the heart of Columbia Road Flower Market — London's most beautiful Sunday market, a street of Victorian terraces turned entirely into flower stalls from early morning. The pub opens early on Sunday for the traders and shoppers, which means you can buy your flowers and then take a pint in a pub that has looked out over this particular ritual of East London life for over a century. The Royal Oak also appeared in The Krays film — a connection that places it firmly in the geography of East London's mythology.

The Morgan Arms was built in an area once known locally as "cut-throat alley" — a detail that gives its current gastropub warmth a particular charm. Named for Sir Charles Morgan of Tredegar, a military figure with local connections, its griffin emblem (from the Morgan family coat of arms) has become one of East London's more distinctive pub insignia. Voted best pub in the Mile End and Bow area by Londonist readers in 2015, it's a pub that earns its local reputation one Sunday roast at a time.

The Shakespeare is the oldest surviving pub building in Stoke Newington — a Victorian backstreet local on a quiet road that has retained much of its early character. For generations it was run by the Lazarus family, who gave it a personal continuity rare in any pub and remarkable for a neighbourhood that has changed dramatically around it. It is the kind of London pub that exists quietly and confidently, knowing exactly what it is without needing to announce it.

The Three Crowns takes its name from King James I — the three crowns representing the united realms of England, Scotland and Ireland that he combined on accession in 1603. Originally called the Cock and Harp, it was renamed in his honour and has carried the three-crown emblem ever since. Today it's a lively gastropub with The Waiting Room, a basement music venue that continues a centuries-long tradition as one of Stoke Newington High Street's social anchors.

The Rose and Crown is one of several distinctive interwar Truman's Brewery pubs in Stoke Newington, designed by Truman's in-house architect A. E. Sewell in 1930–32. Its handsome period design — warm brick, clean 1930s lettering — represents a specific and underappreciated chapter of London pub architecture, and its Grade II listing recognises a building that is as much an artefact of its era as any Victorian gin palace.

The Warrington Hotel is one of London's most opulent Art Nouveau pub interiors — the golden ceramic entrance, carved cherubs, stained glass and sweeping mahogany bar were installed in a lavish 1890s reworking of an 1857 building, creating one of Maida Vale's most extraordinary architectural statements. Local legend — almost certainly apocryphal but entirely entertaining — holds that the pub was once an upmarket brothel under Church of England ownership, and that its proximity to Randolph Crescent is supposedly the origin of the British slang word "randy." Whether true or not, it's the kind of story that gets attached to extraordinarily beautiful buildings for a reason.

Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner — the man who catalogued every significant building in England — described The Queens in Crouch End as "one of suburban London's outstanding grand pubs." That endorsement from arguably the most authoritative voice in 20th-century British architectural history has followed the pub ever since, and the building justifies it: Art Nouveau stained glass, an ornate circular central bar and a Grade II* listing that places it in the top few percent of listed buildings. When developers tried to alter its historic features, local campaigns reinstated the original glass and screens. It was saved twice over.

The Cricketers overlooks Richmond Green — one of the oldest cricket grounds in England, where matches have been recorded since 1666. The pub that takes its name from that game, and watches it from the same spot it has occupied since around 1770, is one of London's most quintessentially English outdoor-drinking experiences: a summer afternoon with cricket on the Green, a pint from the pub that has been here for the whole of it. The pub burned down at one point and was rebuilt in 1834 on its original foundations, making it a rebuilt original — still in the same place, still watching the same game.