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
Fountain Inn, Ashurst and non-fiction works, mentioned the Fountain Inn in his novel "The Four Men: a Farrago"; he wrote approvingly about the beer. In 1979, the pub was used to film the video for Wonderful Christmastime, Paul McCartney's Christmas song with his band Wings. Actor Sir Laurence Olivier lived just south of Ashurst, and the Fountain Inn was his local pub. The pub's facade appears in Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas" video from 1979 The Fountain Inn was listed at Grade II by English Heritage on 9 May 1980; this defines it as a "nationally important" building of "special interest". As of February