"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 (Opens in a new window).

I would have you know that this top-fermenting beauty is one the best beers out there, it is done according to the Reinheitsgebot (Opens in a new window), and our Verbundbrief (Opens in a new window) was in 1396 the first 'democratic' constitution of any major city in the Holy Roman Empire (Opens in a new window), 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 (Opens in a new window) appreciated beer rather much.

However, did you know that they were thrown out at the end of the 1950s by then landlady Win Reading (Opens in a new window)? David Richardson of the Oxford CAMRA (Opens in a new window), author of Oxford Pubs (Opens in a new window) - 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.