Man Walks into a Pub: A Social History of drinking beer - review
As the title suggests, this book has a real mix of pub trivia with an academic grounding. It makes you wish you'd chosen it as your thesis topic at university. This is a book that can give any beer newbie all the context they would need to understand just how integral beer drinking has been to Britain. It was a tumultuous journey for beer and it gives you an added admiration for British brewing.
by LUCY PALMER
Barnsley born and bred, Pete Brown wrote the book following a career in advertising. After working on a project for Stella Artois and Heineken he made the switch from beer drinker to beer writer.
“I was sitting behind a two way mirror while groups of young lads would come and talk about beers they liked. I realised that people have a passion about beer I hadn’t seen for any other product. I wanted to learn a bit more about that and my first book was.”
Spanning the length and breadth of beer history, Pete begins with the Egyptians. He trundles through the Romans, the Vikings and the first and second world wars right through to Brew Dog. You learn more in the first few chapters about the history of England than all your secondary school History lessons combined. To begin with, the pace of the book is engaging. Pete is funny and the pages are littered with weird beer facts and anecdotes.
The book starts off really strong, it is fast paced and interesting. Once you reach the middle, however, this peters out. Instead of intriguing new facts, you are somewhat overwhelmed with numbers, dates and legislation. For beer enthusiasts this could be really interesting, however for the general public it gets a bit stale.
For women reading this book, be prepared to flick between empowering 'a-ha!' moments to outright fury. There are some brilliant points where he goes into detail about how the ancient god’s of beer (for the Vikings and pagan religions especially) were female gods but this is all in the beginning. As he pulls the book into the 21st century however, the pub is described as a man’s world, a place where blokes swill beer, fart and crack jokes about ugly women and boobs. Pete’s personal opinion though is not in the least sexist, he strongly believes the gender needs to be taken out of beer. He thinks that removing gender is one of the greatest achievements of craft beer. “I understand this from my advertising days, we want to get women to drink beer. So we will give them a product that is nothing like beer and get them to drink that, how does that work?! It’s deeply patronising.”
The book is supposed to be a social history, not a man’s history and it does feel like the current social atmosphere has been missed out. Women enjoy craft beer but this isn’t mentioned. In fact, there isn’t much of a mention of the craft beer revolution other than to mention Brew Dog. Surely, this would frustrate many craft beer lovers. BUB asked Pete if the open tap events held at craft breweries were the new ‘community pub’. These days, huge groups of men, women, children and dogs descend to spend the day at the breweries. Why wasn’t there mention of these in his book and are open tap day’s a breweries the new pub?
“I first wrote it in 2003 and I had to rewrite it in 2010 because everything had changed. None of the breweries we’ve talked about existed, this whole movement wasn’t there. I’d still call them pubs but it’s like Dr Who, it just goes through regenerations. I’ve started thinking in the last few months that it’s getting a bit out of date again. I reckon in a year or two, I’ll have to do another edition definitely.”
Credit where credit is due, this book does exactly what it sets out to do in the introduction. It gives you a solid understanding of British pub culture but from a voice that is not dissimilar to the overly chatty bloke down the pub. On reading this book, you'll be equipped with all the knowledge of beer drinking you could want. You’ll know that when you settle down for a pint, you are not only enjoying some well deserved time out but you are also continuing an age old cultural tradition that has defined Britain since as long as anyone cares to remember.
If Pete Brown's book was too full of dates for you then BUB reccomends :
Comic Book Story of Beer: A Chronicle of the World's Favorite Beverage from 7000 Bc to Today's Craft Brewing Revolution. Read more
