"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 (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre).

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

However, did you know that they were thrown out at the end of the 1950s by then landlady Win Reading (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)? David Richardson of the Oxford CAMRA (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre), author of Oxford Pubs (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) - 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.