"Basically, we threw [the Inklings] out!"

Now, I am not a specialist in the craft of beer brewing. I do appreciate a pint here and there (*cough cough*) and at times I teach myself the basics of brewing again if some annoying and often incompetent person makes fun of my hometown Cologne's Kölsch (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

I would have you know that this top-fermenting beauty is one the best beers out there, it is done according to the Reinheitsgebot (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), and our Verbundbrief (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) was in 1396 the first 'democratic' constitution of any major city in the Holy Roman Empire (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), thank you very much - and that was supported mostly by the brewers. But I digress!

It is also well-known that both J.R.R. Tolkien and his fellow conspirators in that 'brotherhood' generally called the Inklings (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) appreciated beer rather much.

However, did you know that they were thrown out at the end of the 1950s by then landlady Win Reading (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)? David Richardson of the Oxford CAMRA (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), author of Oxford Pubs (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) - a copy of which I recently bought with Blackwell's -, tells this story from a talk he had with her when doing the research for his book.