Rory Hanrahan is originally from Ireland. He now lives in Oxfordshire, where he manages three village pubs with his wife.
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Picture Gerry Adams in a dimly lit courtroom, one hand raised in statesmanlike denial, the other twitching like Dr. Strangelove’s infamous Nazi salute, struggling to contain the contradictions of his many roles. Peacemaker? Politician? Bearded bard? Or something darker, as my late father always insisted: the architect of republican violence, a figurehead for the IRA and Sinn
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Good morning from behind the bar, where the beer is still pouring – just. So far this year I have been involved in the sad, and probably permanent, closure of three family-owned pubs. The choice was stark in each case: bankruptcy or fold up. Three families almost ruined, three perfectly good business that employed over
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To a landlord in a draughty Victorian boozer staring at his latest business rates bill, it will read more like a ransom note from the mafia than a letter from HMRC. In 2026, under Keir Starmer’s ‘growth-first’ regime, this chap’s rates have rocketed. While Starmer is strutting the stage at Davos or waxing lyrical or at
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You don’t need to be a fervent admirer of Donald Trump to recognise that, on matters of national security and cultural cohesion, he hits the bullseye our establishment prefers to evade. His administration’s recent proposal – requiring travellers from visa-waiver countries, including Britain, to disclose five years of social media history as part of the
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In Britain’s public houses, a rebellion is brewing. Landlords, hit hard by the Labour government’s fiscal measures – higher employer National Insurance, slashed business rates relief, and policies that threaten closures – have started discussing boycotts. The plan: bar Labour MPs from the premises as a protest against the erosion of the hospitality sector. As
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The sun had barely set over Sydney’s Bondi Beach, when horror unfolded at the Hanukkah celebration. A father and son, armed with licensed firearms, opened fire on a crowd of hundreds gathered for the Jewish holiday, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than 40 others. The perpetrators have been identified as Sajid Akram, 50,
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Dublin’s councillors have seen sense – for now. They were due to vote today on a proposal to rename the city’s Herzog Park. Chaim Herzog – the Belfast-born, Dublin-raised, British officer who helped liberate Bergen-Belsen, and became the sixth president of Israel – was set to be be airbrushed away in a ritual of performative righteousness.
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It is just after tea-time on Budget day, and my pub is already half-empty. A few hours ago, Rachel Reeves stood up and, in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility’, drove the final nail into what remains of Britain’s hospitality industry. By failing to address the devastation that Labour’s decision to hike employers’ National Insurance did
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At times, I still hear my late father, Sean O’Callaghan’s, voice echoing in my mind. Sean died in 2017 but there’s no doubt what he’d make of Britain today: that the sepsis of sectarianism is slowly, but surely, poisoning our bloodstream. We’re entrenching extremes and sidelining moderates. Northern Ireland’s lesson is stark: entrench extremes, and
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The tale of the death of the British pub has been well told. Around eight boozers a week are serving last orders for the final time. But some pubs are bucking the trend, the most famous of which is The Farmer’s Dog in Oxfordshire, Jeremy Clarkson’s latest success story. What is its secret? Running a
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As with so many political assassinations across the Atlantic – the Kennedys, Martin Luther King –Charlie Kirk’s killer is likely to be some deranged individual, a lone wolf driven by fevered delusions, perhaps, or a sick, mentally ill person. His murder, though, is anything but mundane. Kirk was not just another talking head; he was
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BrewDog is in trouble. Its beers have been axed by nearly 2,000 pubs. Punk IPA – once a craft beer titan – has vanished from bars across Britain. The firm is closing ten of its own pubs, including its flagship bar in Aberdeen. Last month, co-founder Martin Dickie left. There’s little doubt that BrewDog has lost
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My Oxfordshire taproom used to sing on Fridays: carpenters, teachers and office clerks, knackered from the week’s graft, would elbow for pints in a natural democracy of nods and grins. The bar was a grand leveller – toff or tiler, all waited their turn and banter stitched the room together. Post-pandemic, that tune has gone
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Norman Tebbit, who died this week at the age of 94, embodied a sterner Britain. His political career was remarkable but it paled in comparison with his unyielding love for his wife Margaret, whom he wheeled through life for four decades after the IRA’s Brighton bomb paralysed her body in 1984. Tebbit never forgave those
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Takings were falling. Regulars were drifting away. Our pub was in a bad way. It was clear that things needed to change. But, paralysed by fear of an employment tribunal in a legal system tilted against employers, we felt trapped. If we sacked the managers and replaced them, we could find ourselves embroiled in a
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It was a drizzly Tuesday evening in the 17th-century Oxford village pub I manage, the kind of night when regulars huddle close to the bar, pints glowing amber under low lights. An old chap in a flat cap, nursing his third ale, grumbled about the council’s latest parking scheme. The village curate, leaning on the
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It was a quiet lunch shift at the pub in Oxford where I work, the kind of day when the bar feels more like a confessional than a business. A lone customer, a woman with a light accent I took for Dutch, had just finished her meal and approached to pay. Playing the host, I
