Coffee houses are enjoying a boom, though there remain a few backwaters in Britain where you might still have to walk as far as 20 yards to find one. After a rickety spell in the 1960s, when some people were wary of entering one of London's espresso bars for fear of finding Cliff Richard standing on top of a table belting out Summer Holiday, coffee shops have regained a following they haven't enjoyed since they first blossomed here in the 17th century.

Coffee houses have become the social fulcrum of society, the so-called Third Place between home and office - very often because many people, in an age of portfolio careers and nomadic teleworking, no longer have offices to which they regularly go. We all seek our own neighbourhood Central Perk, the fictional coffee shop in Friends, where we, too, can whine about work, swoon over the other patrons, have hair like Rachel and spend four minutes describing to the barista our preferred personal permutation of ingredients. With food and hot caffeine on tap, it required only wi-fi internet access to persuade many customers that typing on to a laptop while sunk into an armchair - with the next cappuccino just a waiter away - was just like working from home, but with all-day access to muffins.

It is a fitting revival for a meeting place that has shaped history, commerce, literature and revolution. Lloyd's began life as a coffee house in London offering insurance for the British empire's merchant fleet. So did London's Stock Exchange; and The Tatler and The Spectator. The auctioneers Sotheby's and Christie's grew from salerooms attached to coffee houses. They were havens where people of all classes met to discuss business and art, politics and philosophy; and to gossip. Johnson, Dryden and Swift were regulars.

Charles II was not a fan, seeing London's coffee houses as “places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers”. Little has changed. Today that job is being done by the chap with the latte posting on his political blog.