Plan to limit 'vertical drinking' decried by pub landlords and UK politicians

LONDON (AP) — A proposal to limit “vertical drinking,” a bureaucratic euphemism for having a pint while standing, has turned into a political headache for one local government council in London.

Politicians from Prime Minister Andy Burnham to London Mayor Sadiq Khan have piled in to decry the idea from Westminster City Council, which is responsible for licensing pubs and restaurants in the West End, a nightlife hub popular with tourists and locals.

A feature of many of those pubs is the crowd of drinkers who mill around sharing drinks with friends, often spilling out into the street on warm spring and summer evenings. Lesley Lewis, who has run the French House pub in Soho for 37 years, said discouraging that tradition would only drive customers to other parts of the city.

“We rely on those people standing up with the rents and the rates (taxes) put upon us,” she said. “People want to enjoy themselves in Soho, they want to have a drink outside, they want to dance. They don’t want to sit down and just be where they are, they want to meet people and chat.”

With British newspapers filled with headlines such as “Sitting room only at pubs?” and “Soho’s pubs won’t take clamp down on ‘vertical drinking’ lying down,” the Westminster council hit back at “confusing” news stories that misrepresented its plans.

Council leader Paul Swaddle issued a press release stressing that the proposal was part of a draft policy that is still open for public comment. The council’s goal is to reduce noise and disorderly behavior by encouraging bars and restaurants to serve more people at their tables, not bar anyone from having a drink while standing, he said.

“Let me be clear about what we’re trying to achieve,’’ he said. “This is about safety, not stopping anyone standing at a bar with a pint in their hand.’’

The council’s draft licensing policy includes a proposal to discourage “excessive drunkenness” by encouraging business owners to provide more opportunities “for people to sit and enjoy a drink and order food by table service in place of open bar space that caters for high volume vertical drinking.”

Westminster has more pubs, bars and restaurants licensed to sell alcohol than any other local authority in the U.K.

While the council’s policy statement stresses the important role the hospitality industry plays in the local economy, it also says local leaders must ensure Westminster is “a great place for residents to live.”

That didn’t stop the criticism from more senior government officials, who have been focused on bolstering a hospitality industry that still hasn’t recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.

A spokesman for Burnham said pubs full of people standing around sharing a pint isn’t a nuisance, it’s a part of “British life.” The prime minister is encouraging local leaders to work with the hospitality industry so that pubs can thrive, he said.

“The pubs that we’ve got are at the heart of high streets, and I think it’s really important to signal at the start of my time in office that I will be a defender for them,” Burnham told reporters last month while visiting a pub called the Hare in Harlow, Essex. “I will speak up for them and act.”

Khan suggested he would use new powers that will be granted to his office later this year to review the Westminster policy.

“You can’t run a world-famous nightlife district with a village-hall mindset,” Khan said on X. “London’s hospitality and nightlife support jobs, culture and growth.”

FILE - People stand drinking outside the Coach & Horses pub on Saint Patrick's Day in the Covent Garden district of central London, which is a popular tourist area, Tuesday, March 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, file)

LONDON (AP) — Marlon James and Douglas Stuart have a chance to become only the fifth author to win the Booker Prize twice after both were named Tuesday on the shortlist for arguably the U.K.’s most prestigious fiction accolade.

Judges of the award whittled down the 13 semifinalists announced in July to six on Tuesday and said the shortlisted books are “moving, pacey, funny, violent, intriguing, horrifying and hopeful.” They were selected from an original 163 submissions.

The Booker Prize celebrates the best works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the U.K. and/or Ireland between October 2025 and Sept. 2026. The winner stands to win 50,000 pounds ($67,000) and a trophy named Iris, so-called after the 1978 winner Iris Murdoch.

“Most of these books were beginning to feel like old friends after at least two readings,” said historian Mary Beard, head of the judging panel. “And it was painful to have to let some of them go, with their now bent spines and dog-eared pages, their brilliant capacity to make us think, argue and sometimes disagree.”

The list includes James’ “The Disappearers,” about a group of gay men in his native Jamaica in what was a hostile environment in the 1980s; Stuart’s “ John of John,” a story of father-son secrets on a remote Scottish island. James won the Booker in 2015 for “A Brief History of Seven Killings” and Stuart won in 2020 for “Shuggie Bain.”

If either were to win, they would be the fifth author to have been awarded the Booker Prize twice, joining J.M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood.

Also on the shortlist is Pulitzer Prize laureate Elizabeth Strout, whose heartfelt small-town tale “The Things We Never Say” once again celebrates the lives of those in her native New England. Strout’s “Oh William!” was a finalist in 2022. She won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009 for “Olive Kitteridge.”

The others on the list are British authors Rebecca Perry for Medieval-to-modern tale “May We Feed the King”; 81-year-old M. John Harrison, who would become the oldest winner of the award if his postapocalyptic tale “The End of Everything” wins; and the quirky campus novel “Black Bag” from Luke Kennard.

It’s only the second time in the past decade that men have outnumbered women on the shortlist.

Beard said the judging panel, which included Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and American novelist Patricia Lockwood, concluded their deliberations “neatly propped up against one another, almost glowing.”

“These novels range from the hilarious to the discomfiting, from the frighteningly strange to the alarmingly domestic, from the powerfully shocking to the intriguingly understated,” she said.

Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers and is open to novels from any country published in the U.K. and Ireland. Last year’s winner was “Flesh” by Hungarian-British writer David Szalay.

This year's winner will be announced on Monday, Nov. 9.

FILE - Douglas Stuart poses for a portrait on April 29, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Elizabeth Strout poses with her book, 'Tell Me Everything," in London on June 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Joanna Chan, File)

FILE - Jamaican author Marlon James poses with the award after his book, "A Brief History of Seven Killings," was named as winner of the 2015 Booker Prize for Fiction in London on Oct. 13, 2015. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)