Your report on the transformation of the Scottish Stores pub in London (Former strip joint wins pub conservation award, 5 April) refers to it as having been “an unloved dive”. I’ve worked opposite it for decades, and the many occasions when it was so jam-packed that its patrons were bursting out of the doors is evidence that it was anything but “unloved”.
Furthermore, it provided great comfort to some of us who didn’t frequent it. My building houses a radical bookshop, and the HQs of many political organisations. Whenever I turned the corner from King’s Cross station to see a row of police vans, I’d always know that it was statistically more likely to be on account of a stand-off between rival football fans at the pub than because of another Special Branch raid on my place.
Albert Beale
London
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