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Great idea Mr Mackin, count me in.

Good idea nicebloke. Hire a room above a pub!
Or, in an Internet cafe!

>persuade rpfuller to join you at the pub.
Wonderful idea. I'll drop him a note today. He's at Cambridge - right?

No excuses necessary - i'm in Old Street and Angel this weekend for a birthday, though my knowledge of London is quite good, i shall see what is around in them area's. In S o h o their is the 'global cafe' which is a trendy wine-coffee-internet bar, whether they hire it out, i don't know, but will check. If it is just a bar somewhere in the centre, their are many which have rooms for hire.

Cittie of Yorke (HoIborn)
22 High Holborn, WC1; find it by looking out for it’s big black and gold clock; Tube: Chancery Lane

Looking rather like a vast baronial hall, the main back room of this unique pub takes your breath away when seen for the first time. The extraordinarily extended bar counter (reputedly the longest in Britain) stretches off into the distance, vast thousand-gallon wine vats rest above the gantry, and big bulbous lights hang from the soaring high raftered roof. It does get packed at lunchtime and in the early evening, particularly with lawyers and judges, but it's at busy times like these when the pub seems most magnificent. Most people tend to congregate in the middle, so you should still be able to bag one of the intimate, old-fashioned and ornately carved cubicles that run along both sides. The triangular Waterloo fireplace, with grates on all three sides and a figure of Peace among laurels, used to stand in the Grays Inn Common Room until barristers stopped dining there; we used to think this was unique, but a reader tells us there's a similar one in the Oxford Union. Appealingly priced Sam Smiths OB on handpump and some unusually flavoured vodkas such as chocolate orange or pear and ginger; smartly dressed staff, fruit machine, video game and piped music. A smaller, comfortable wood-panelled room has lots of little prints of York and attractive brass lights, while the ceiling of the entrance hall has medieval-style painted panels and plaster York roses. There's a lunchtime food counter in the main hall with more in the downstairs cellar bar: the choice typically includes filled baps, ploughman's and salads, various pies (£4.25) and half a dozen daily specials (£6). A pub has stood on this site since 1430, though the current building owes more to the 1695 coffee house erected here behind a garden; it was reconstructed in Victorian times using 17th-c materials and parts.

*a vast baronial hall befits the occasion*

Maybe I can contact one of the Brits later on for directions and details.

Anybody know of a good hotel nearby and who fancies a good old fashioned Sunday Lunch too!