the general economic climate are either to blame, or are factors in the decline. Changes in demographics may be an additional factor. In the fifteen years to 2017 a quarter of 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 British Muslim population. In 2015 the rate of pub closures came under the scrutiny of Parliament in the UK, with a promise of legislation to improve relations between owners and tenants. The Lost Pubs Project listed 31,301 closed English pubs on 19 July 2016, with photographs of over 16,000. By June 2022, pub numbers in England and Wales had fallen to a record low of 39,970, a loss of 7,000 in 10 years. Cultural associations 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 the Spread Eagle in Thame, Berkshire, and published his autobiography: An Innkeeper's Diary (London: Chatto & Windus, 1931). During his idiosyncratic occupancy many famous people came to stay, such as H. G. Wells. United States president George W. Bush fulfilled his lifetime ambition of visiting a 'genuine British pub' during his November 2003 state visit to the UK when he had lunch and a pint of non-alcoholic lager (Bush being a teetotaler) with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Dun Cow pub in Sedgefield, County Durham, in Blair's home constituency. There were approximately 53,500 public houses in 2009 in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller villages no longer have a local pub. London Many of London's pubs are known to have been used by famous people, but in some cases, such as the association between Samuel Johnson and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, this is speculative, based on little more than the fact that the person is known to have lived nearby. However, Charles Dickens is known to have visited the Cheshire Cheese, the Prospect of Whitby, Ye Olde Cock Tavern and many others. Samuel