Let the words of classic and modern writers take you on a pub crawl through the history and pleasures of beer in a new book, Beer Anthology, edited by Roger Protz and published on 28 July by the Campaign for Real Ale.
This irresistible collection of quotes about beer, pubs and drinking embraces the words of classic writers such as William Blake, AE Housman and Thomas Hardy together with contemporary beer commentators, including Melissa Cole and Breandán Kearney.
The book is a treat to dip into for anyone interested in how our national drink and drinking habits have been reflected across a wide range of sources.
Even Queen Victoria is quoted to say: “Give my people plenty of beer, good beer and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them.”
CAMRA’s Beer Anthology takes you on a journey through the history of beer, reveals how travellers during or at the end of a long journey were refreshed and explores the history of porter and pale ale and how they evolved.
Among these themes, the book captures the great age of the coach, where many writers, with Dickens and Dr Johnson to the fore, journeyed extensively by horse-drawn conveyance and vividly described the pleasures of their accommodation in roadside inns, often in bleak terrain.
Such legendary literary figures are joined in the book by today’s small army of writers. Rather than commenting on beer in passing, these are dedicated full time to evaluating, researching, analysing, promoting and championing beer.
Beer goes back many centuries. A Sumerian poet in circa 3000BC, showed that beer was an integral part of daily life in the Old World of North Africa and the Middle East. “I feel wonderful, drinking beer in a blissful mood with joy in my heart and a happy liver.”
Indeed, this book can help to uplift your mood and to stimulate your love of a good pint – even if it isn’t after one of Dickens’ long horse-drawn coach journeys.
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