BEER: IN SO MANY WORDS
Edited by Adrian Tierney-Jones
“I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths...”
That glass of amber liquid with its brass-bright-depths, luminous as an autumn sunset, refreshing like truth itself... Beer: according to Jack Nicholson the best damn drink in the world.
Which is why right now the world is discovering beer again – craft beer, micro-brews and real ale, in every combination of malt and hops, from all over the world. With new breweries and brewpubs opening every week there has never been a more exciting time to drink it.
The splendour, the complexity, and above all the sheer deliciousness of a glass of ale have over the years been celebrated by our finest writers in both prose and poetry. But all the best words written on beer, from Britain to Germany to the United States, have never been collected together in book form until now.
Here, then, in this handsome volume, as rich and surprising as a freshly-pulled pint of best, is everyone from Ernest Hemingway extolling a cold bottle of Ballantine ale as the finest reward after a spot of hard marlin-fishing, to Inspector Morse partaking of a few pints in an Oxford tavern to set his deductive juices going, and Ian Rankin in the Edinburgh bar frequented by Rebus as much as himself. Here is porter sipped by a limpid Alpine lake in the fiction of Thomas Mann, and thirst quenched by Lion beer in a stifling African bar in Paul Theroux’s.
All the finest beer writers of today are here, from Pete Brown to Roger Protz and Boak & Bailey, as well as doyens of the profession like Michael Jackson and Ian Nairn, and brewers like Garrett Oliver. It is the perfect present for any beer lover, including yourself.
So sit down, a glass of beer at your elbow, lustrous in hue and brimming with flavour... and dip in...
Adrian Tierney-Jones writes about beer for the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, the Daily Mail and All About Beer. His books include World Bottled Beers, Britain’s Beer Revolution (with Roger Protz) and The Big Book of Beer. He is also the editor of the bestselling 1001 Beers To Try Before You Die.
ISBN: 978 0 9932911 1 1
256pp
197 x 129mm
jacketed hardback
“Perfect gift idea” Daily Telegraph
“Any book that contains Pete Brown, Patrick Hamilton and George Orwell is always going to be worth dipping into” Henry Jeffries, Guardian Drink Books of the Year
“The contents page is a delight to read in itself. As a community, beer geeks and writers need to be reminded fairly regularly that beer doesn't belong just to us, that it’s a popular drink that is appreciated by a wide range of people. And here, names like Boak and Bailey, Roger Protz, Jeff Evans, Melissa Cole and, well, me, rub shoulders with Dylan Thomas, Ian Rankin, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene and Charles Dickens.
This is a book to lose yourself in, to wander back and forth through, to put down briefly and take a sip of something dark and rich while you ponder… It reminds you of what made you fall in love with beer (and reading, and writing) and is highly likely to give you fresh perspectives and insights on a subject you thought you knew all about” Pete Brown’s Beer Blog
“Great... The reason we’re impressed with Beer in So Many Words is (a) that it finally puts that famous 1974 Ian Nairn essay back in print, along with the bonus of another of his beer articles; and (b) because so many of the other choices are things that haven’t previously been collected, e.g. Jonathan Meades on his childhood memories of the pub, Patrick Leigh Fermor on Bavaria, and so on. But the standards are there, too – Orwell on ‘The Moon Under Water’, for example -- so this really is a good place to start if you want to buy just one beer writing anthology” Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog
“Some of my favourite writers, both beer and non-beer, and an ideal way to enjoy bite-sized pieces of beer-related prose while settled with a nice pint of bitter in your favourite pub” Matthew Curtis, Total Ales