Karl Marx, Ian Nairn & the Spaniards Pub, Hampstead Lane
In one of those research rabbit holes one can go down I was re-reading bits of Nairn’s London today. Published as a Penguin paperback in 1966 it looks at the architecture of the various areas of London (Nairn did not like most 1960s architecture) but also mentions another of Nairn’s favourite places, pubs.
Nairn was a keen real ale drinker in the period immediately before a tide of industrial old style keg beer drove the handpumps out of most London pubs in the early 1970s, only for them to reappear again thanks to a drinkers revolt organised by CAMRA.
Anyway one of the pubs Nairn finds himself is the Spaniards on Hampstead Lane. An historic pub dating back to the C16th. In the mid-1960s Nairn found it selling Bass, which he approved of.
A quick Google will tell you that well known former drinkers in the Spaniards included Charles Dickens and Karl Marx. The former is documented as the pub appears in his novels. The latter certainly is not.
Marx certainly liked beer, though possibly not quite as much as Pilsner enthusiast Engels and certainly went to the pub (when he could afford it). Which ones he went to we don’t really know. The only account we have is of a pub crawl by Marx and Engels in Tottenham Court Rd which was written by a third party a long time afterwards.
In the fifty volumes of Marx and Engels Collected Works, Engels can be found mentioning which pubs he went to and what beer (pilsner mostly) he was drinking. Marx does not.
We do know that Marx and Engels walked on Hampstead Heath- Engels being the keener it would seem, and that on at least one occasion they enjoyed a family and friends picnic on the Heath (1864). Does it seem likely that Marx dropped by the Spaniards? Yes, but we can’t be sure.
These days btw the Spaniards sells a range of mid-strength cask ales and is something of a visitor and tourist location. An afternoon early in the week when the sun is out will probably still be quite pleasant
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