Pub London's pubs had closed. The closures have been ascribed to factors such as changing tastes, rise in the cost of beer due to applied taxes and the increase in the Muslim population. Inns and taverns feature throughout English literature and poetry, from The Tabard Inn in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" onwards. The highwayman Dick Turpin used the Swan Inn at Woughton-on-the-Green in Buckinghamshire as his base. Jamaica Inn near Bolventor in Cornwall gave its name to a 1936 novel by Daphne du Maurier and a 1939 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In the 1920s John Fothergill (1876–1957) was the innkeeper of
Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan adapted the novel "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier, from which Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison created the screenplay for "Rebecca", the 1940 film. Sherwood and Harrison were nominated for an Academy Award. In later years MacDonald wrote television scripts for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" ("Malice Domestic", 1957) and "Perry Mason" ("The Case of the Terrified Typist", 1958). His novel "Patrol" was issued as one of the first twenty Penguin Books, and, as "W.J. Stuart", he wrote the novelisation of the 1956 science fiction film "Forbidden Planet". MacDonald also infrequently dabbled in science fiction under his own name,