"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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

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

However, did you know that they were thrown out at the end of the 1950s by then landlady Win Reading (Si apre in una nuova finestra)? David Richardson of the Oxford CAMRA (Si apre in una nuova finestra), author of Oxford Pubs (Si apre in una nuova finestra) - 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.