Which Oxford pub was the regular meeting place of Tolkien’s literary group, the Inklings?

The Eagle and Child was the Oxford pub where the Inklings regularly met.

The Eagle and Child, often nicknamed the Bird and Baby, stood on St Giles’ Street in Oxford. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other writers used its back room for conversation and for reading work aloud. The group became known as the Inklings.

The meetings were especially important during the development of The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s fiction. Members offered criticism, encouragement, and discussion, although the Inklings were not a formal society with a fixed membership or published manifesto.

The pub is sometimes confused with the nearby Lamb and Flag, another Oxford establishment associated with literary gatherings and with C. S. Lewis. The Eagle and Child is the specific location most strongly identified with the Inklings’ regular meetings. The building’s literary association has made it a notable Tolkien and Lewis landmark.