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
White Horse Inn (Broadway version) by Hans Spialek. "White Horse Inn" opened in New York on 1 October 1936, at the Center Theatre. In 1931, Jacob Wilk, executive for Warner Brothers Films, had approached Erik Charell with regard to a possible American production of "White Horse Inn". But it was not until February 1936 that the "New York Times" finally disclosed that a triumvirate of producers - Rowland Stebbins, Warner Brothers and the Rockefellers - would present "White Horse Inn". “Such delay was due to the depression shortage of investment capital for large scale musicals, and a reluctance to mount Graham's translation, penned in an