Why was Rupert Brooke hanging round the pub?

On our trip to the Chilterns before Easter, we were taken by hosts Richard and Rachel on a long Sunday walk, the reward for which was a lunch at a pub called the Pink and Lily at a place called Lacey Green. Nice pub, too, full of walkers and Sunday lunchers, and far too busy for me to ask the bar staff the burning question: "So, why is the pub called the Pink and Lily? I mean, I know The Scaffold had a hit record called 'Lily The Pink' but why is a pub called...?"

So instead, I just said, "Could I have some menus, please?" and they could answer that question all right ("They're on the bar just by your elbow") but the funny thing was that the inn sign didn't explain the name either, because what dominated it was a picture of a serious, poetic-looking young man, looking neither lilyish nor pinkish. And then, when I went back to the bar to order, my eye fell on a battered book on the shelf behind the bar. It was a life of Rupert Brooke. Of course! That's where I'd seen the face before. It was famed First World War poet Rupert Brooke, he who died of malaria before the enemy could get him.

So the big question was: "Why Rupert Brooke on the sign?" but the pub was still too busy, so I never found out. I did draw the barmaid's attention to the book and ask her if it was often requested by customers, and she, as if she had never seen it before, said that nobody had ever asked to look at it in her time there, and then her eye was caught by someone else, so I can't tell you the reason why Rupert Brooke, whom we all associate with Grantchester, has his mug all over an inn sign in Buckinghamshire.

What I can tell you, however, is why there is a pub in the Bayswater Road, near Holland Park tube station, which has plaster bishop's hats sticking up all over the parapet. I used to live near there, and sometimes go into the pub, which was called The Mitre. Then some blasted brewery decided to make it a theme pub, rechristened it the Raj and put in all those things which are supposed to make us think of Imperial India, such as wicker furniture, bamboo things and cobras in baskets, so I never went again. But as it was too much like hard work to chip all the bishop's mitres off the parapet, they left them there. I don't know what it's called now. Maybe it's gone back to being The Mitre.

Maybe it's not even a pub. I used to think that a pub was an unchanging landmark in our culture, but it isn't so. One day it's the Railway Tap, the next day it's the Slug And Lettuce. One day it's named after some old battle like the Alma or the Redan, and the next day it's the Bottle and Firkin. Or, even worse, it's gone. There is a village not far from me called The Shoe which has a pub opposite a side road. I always used the pub as a sign to turn down the side road, which is a short cut on the way home. Then one day, blow me down, the pub had gone. Been turned into a private house. I nearly crashed.

I should be all the more conscious of this, I suppose, because my father worked for Border Breweries in North Wales and was always off touring their pubs, and closing them down if he felt like it. Some of them had regional names. There were lots of Cross Foxes, because that was the family crest of the local posh family. Never seen a Cross Foxes in the South. There were some Welsh names, too, such as the Hwntw Arms, which I used to admire because I thought Hwntw was the only word in the world with no vowels in it, not knowing then that "w" is a vowel in Welsh.

Incidentally, I once met Lord Raglan, descendant of the man made famous by the Crimean War, and he told me that it was something of a thrill to come across pubs named after you. "The Lord Raglan, usually, or the Raglan Arms," he said. "Quite often, soldiers leaving the army set up a pub with their demob money and named it after their commanding officer, in gratitude. That's why there are so many places called the Marquis of Granby. He must have been very generous. Anyway, I have been known to go into pubs named after me and reveal my identity, in the faint hope of a free pint."

A reader writes: Is all this leading anywhere ?

Miles Kington writes: No. I was just hoping someone could write in and tell me why the pub is called the Pink and Lily, and what the connection with Rupert Brooke is.

Reader: If that's all you're after, I'm off to the sports pages.

Kington: I'll come with you.