A few more books at bedtime - both beer-related and non-beer-related

I received a couple of beer books in my Christmas stocking, and so far, have only glanced through them. Both publications look as though they will be good reads, so I look forward to getting stuck into them. The only question is which one to read first?

Before revealing what, these books are, it’s worth taking a quick look back at some of the other books I’ve read since the start of the year.  I will begin with the comprehensive, hard-back volume I received last Christmas (2020), which was titled “The Family Brewers of Britain.”

Researched and authored by veteran beer writer Roger Protz, this book is a real labour of love, as it details the remaining family-owned independent brewers, who are still in existence. These are the true survivors, proud custodians of over 300 years of brewing heritage, who kept alive the tradition of locally brewed ales, brewed to suit local customers and local palates at a time when their much larger brethren were flooding the market with heavily promoted national keg brands.

Roger visited all 30 companies, featured in the book, and then wrote up his findings with care and attention. The result is a fascinating insight, not just into the histories of these breweries, but what they are about today. Many have been forced to adapt and evolve, in order to survive. Some have constructed newer, smaller and more energy efficient breweries, whilst others have sold off pubs.

The biggest problem most are facing is they have been squeezed on the one hand, between the bigger, national, and international giants, and on the other by the burgeoning micro and craft brewery sectors. Roger reveals how these surviving family firms have dealt with these changes, how they have adapted, but most of all reveals that the majority are thriving as new generations have come forward and are now, firmly in control.

There was a considerable amount of text to get through and a lot of information to digest, so it’s not surprising the book took me several months to read, but I also had a number of fiction books to get through. This was after finally finishing Anthony Powell’s marathon, 12 volume chronicle, “A Dance to the Music of Time,” a fascinating and semi-biographical account of the middle years of the last century, as observed from an upper-middle class perspective.

I then moved on to “Out of Africa,” by Karen Blixen, a novel best known for the film version, which . starred Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. Karen was a Danish settler, who married her cousin, a Swedish baron. The two of them bought a coffee plantation in Kenya, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. It was a venture that was doomed to failure, as the land they purchased was too high and too dry, for the successful cultivation of coffee, and after years of diminishing yields, the harvest failed, totally in 1930.

Karen separated from her husband in 1921, and then managed the plantation on her own. The book is a fascinating account of her struggles, along with the relationship she had with the native Kenyans who worked and lived on the plantation.  Baroness Blixen, and the people who worked her estate, developed a deep respect for one another, which left her devastated when she was forced to sell the farm and return to Denmark, in 1931.

Another tragedy befell Karen, when her lover, mentor and confidant, the English adventurer Denys Finch-Hatton, was killed in a plane crash. As the footnote on the back cover of the novel says, “Written with astonishing clarity and an unsentimental intelligence, Out of Africa portrays a way of life that has disappeared forever.”

Next up was George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia,” a personalised account of the author’s time as a volunteer with the Republican forces, during the Spanish Civil War. If, like me, you have ever wondered how the Republican side, which represented the legitimate government of Spain, with all the resources behind it that a modern state could muster, could then lose the fight against Franco’s fascist Falangist insurrection, then Orwell’s account will explain why.

After being wounded at the front, Orwell was sent back to Barcelona to recuperate, only to be caught up in the vicious in-fighting that had broken out between various factions on the republican side. Socialists, communists and Trotskyist, groups were fighting each other not just to control the direction that the conflict was taking, but to demonstrate which was the most left leaning and revolutionary. Meanwhile Franco’s forces, who were backed by Hitler and Mussolini, gradually gained the upper hand.

Eric Arthur Blair was lucky to escape from Spain with his life, thanks in no small part to the actions of his wife, Eileen, who managed to track him down, and then spirit him away under the noses of the, by then, Soviet-backed republican regime. His book is a lesson, not just about the futility of war, but also of enrolling for a noble cause, and then having one’s illusions, brutally shattered by subsequent events.

The final book is the one I am reading at the moment. “Anna Karenina," by Leo Tolstoy, is a lengthy novel involving betrayal, jealousy, scandal, and despair, in Russian high society, during the latter quarter of the 19^th Century. Described as far easier to read and get to grips with than “War & Peace,” Tolstoy’s most famous work, I am enjoying what I have read so far.

As with Karen Blixen’s novel, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina gives an insight into a long-vanished world, but this time it is the world of the Russian Aristocracy, several decades before it was swept away by the Bolsheviks and their bloody revolution.  I am approximately one third of the way through the novel but am in no hurry to finish it.

Finally, the two books I received as Christmas presents. Both are beer related, and both are published by CAMRA books. Starting with, “50 Years of CAMRA,” this, as its sub-title suggests, is a book “Celebrating 50 years of Campaigning for Real Ale.”

Specially commissioned by CAMRA’s National Executive, and written by Laura Hadland, the book is a factual, but entertaining look back at the history of the Campaign for Real Ale. Starting with its almost comical inception by four young friends on a drinking holiday in Ireland, to its position today as Europe’s largest, and most successful single issue, consume movement, this book is of special interest to a person like me, who was a CAMRA member for 45 years, and an active one for most of that time, as well.

I can see myself becoming engrossed in this book, and re-living some of the campaigning highs, and lows I was personally involved with. It will also be good to read the stories from a different viewpoint and to learn more about the workings and machinations of the Campaign.

The final book is something a of a wild card; a bit of a dark horse, if you like. “A Year in Beer,” by Jonny Garrett, with its sub-title “The Beer Lover’s Guide to the Seasons,” looks like my kind of book. It follows the concept of drinking throughout the year, season by season and month by month, following the author’s suggestions of the most appropriate beers to reflect the changing seasons.

Jonny Garrett freely admits that he isn’t sure that seasonal drinking is really a thing. Not in the way that most people understand it. He is, of course, right in his thinking that we are no longer totally in hoc to the changing seasons, primarily because we have lost our connection with both the land, and also with nature itself.

Th inventions of refrigeration and pastueristion mean we are no longer dictated to by time of year or the weather that goes with it, and should we see fit, we can brew almost any type or style of beer we wish. This doesn’t detract from the changing seasons, and Johnny argues that we are still very much guided by our past experiences, and the impact they have had on us, our society, and our culture.

He claims that on the one hand it’s global, whilst on the other hand it’s deeply personal, reflecting our personalities, moods, location, or the situation we find ourselves in. With these thoughts in mind, I’m going to open my imagination, go with the flow and see where this book is going to take me. It should be an interesting ride!

Disclosure: None of these books were freebies, although several were Christmas presents, and as such, didn't cost me anything. The others, I paid full price for.