The best bar in the land

What do we want from a pub? The simple answer is not, in fact, a drink.Oh, we enjoy the drinks. Foamy or fizzy, refreshing or sticky, warming or icy, mellow or vicious drinks, and those you don't really know you're drinking until you wake up somewhere off the Hanger Lane gyratory system with your clothes gently smouldering. But if it was simply drink we wanted we'd spend our weekends clanking home from the off-licence with significantly fuller wallets, and the pubs would all be empty. They're not.

We want more than drink. Most of the time we want company, ambience. Some of the time we even want the opposite, an anonymous little pub where you can read your paper and think big thoughts without distraction, drawn to the place because everybody doesn't know your name. It's a strange, subtle psychology that draws us to some pubs and not to others. There are broad characteristics of course, that help define who's likely to go where. Wee men in flat caps tend to avoid places with chrome seats and very loud music that sounds like four hours of a photocopier warming up. The young and the beautiful are less than ardent fans of sticky-linoed dives where the most recent song on the jukebox is by Lynyrd Skynyrd. (Actually, no one's a fan of these places; how do they stay open? Ah, that'll be alcoholism.) But the point is this: pubs can get the decor, prices, food and licensing hours precisely right, tailored to those they hope to attract, and still get it wrong.

There's something else. There has to be an indefinable add-on. It could be the history. It could be fine professional beer-keeping. It could be the other customers; either because they're similar to you or, more often than not, because they're the diametric opposite: one of the most marvellous aspects of the best pubs is the mix of experience, of businessman chatting to builder. It could be the barmaid. It could be the quality of the conversation, or the warmth of a big fire, or the live music, or the peace.

Many years ago George Orwell, in a short ruminative essay, wrote of his own ideal pub, called The Moon Under Water: busy enough to be welcoming, but quiet enough to have a conversation. It was unmodernised Victorian in style, had friendly barmaids who called everyone 'dear' and served soft, creamy stout on draught, and good lunches in a room upstairs. It did not, of course, exist (pace the current chain). But here, over the next 80 pages, The Observer is delighted to bring you those bars that, in their own varied ways, come closest to the dream. Happy drinking.