Three folk singers in a pub near Wells...

This song - Roots by Show of Hands - is a superb and pointed expression of true English patriotism:

Getting the price right

I’ve never been wholly convinced by the view that supermarket alcohol prices are killing pubs. Yes, off-trade beer is cheaper, and has been for thirty years. But the experiences of going to the pub and socialising with your friends, compared with sitting at home and drinking a few cans of Stella while watching telly, are not really interchangeable.

However, this is not to say there’s nothing in it, and I can’t help thinking that over the years the pub trade has shot itself in the foot on the pricing issue. There has been an assumption that, year-on-year, prices can be increased by a bit above inflation, and the customers will put up with it. But every other sector has been subject to severe price competition, so why should pubs be exempt? This point has been underlined by the rise of Wetherspoon’s, who aren’t as cheap as the off-trade, but in general are much cheaper than the local pub competition. A Wetherspoon’s pub may be devoid of character, but you need a strong incentive to go somewhere else that is charging 50 pence a pint more. Arguably Wetherspoon’s are doing to the pub trade what ASDA and Morrisons have done to food retailing.

Surely the generality of the pub trade should at least give some impression that they are doing something about prices – maybe, for example, offering one draught beer a week at 50p a pint off. You don’t need to discount everything you sell, or even very much of it, to give an impression of being price competitive, a lesson the supermarkets have learned very well. The current recession is only going to underline this point.

Back to 1948

A couple of months ago, I was told about how the owners of Samuel Smiths’ brewery had apparently acquired a financial stake in a company making pies. The result was that the conventional pub menus in their managed houses had been replaced by new menus predominantly featuring pies of various kinds, something which had not gone down too well in the leafier parts of Cheshire. I don’t routinely go in any Sam’s pubs that serve food, so I had half forgotten about it, but the other day encountered it for myself in a pub not too far from some of the most up-market residential areas in the North-West.

Unfortunately, it was just as bad as I had feared – a listing of unappetising, old-fashioned stodge that was even illustrated with little pictures of some of the dishes to make your gorge rise even more. It was as though Elizabeth David had never lived and we were back in 1948. There weren’t even any sandwiches or similar for those who didn’t want the full 1000 calories. A robust defence of tradition is one thing, a wilful refusal to accept the realities of the present is something else entirely. This is an extremely short-sighted measure that will do nothing for the long-term success of Sam’s outlets and will simply serve to confirm the widely-held view that pubs have nothing to do with good or imaginative food.

Edit 26/12/08: today I have spotted a detailed write-up of this story in the excellent CAMRA magazine Out Inn Cheshire entitled Sam Smith’s Culinary Suicide. Apparently the piemaker in question is called “Sarah Brownridge” and all the dishes on the menu are capable of being cooked in a microwave in eight minutes. An instruction from Chairman Humphrey Smith to all managed houses reads:

The new menu is out and I would make it absolutely clear on behalf of the company that we desire 100% Sarah Brownridge and no other food (with the possible exception of of a roast only on Sundays and only in a minority of our catering houses) to be sold in all pubs. No sandwiches, nothing else, just the food shown on the menu we have sent you.

The article goes on to say, “Needless to say, this has killed the food trade in our local Sam Smith’s houses.”

Minimum pricing canned

Realistically, minimum alcohol pricing was never going to be introduced. There was a major potential conflict with competition law, the effects were uncertain and it would not look good in a recession to be raising the price of a staple purchase of working-class households. Nevertheless, it's good to have a clear confirmation from the government that they have no plans to bring it in at present.

It's interesting how the more extreme ideas of the anti-drink lobby, such as this, a 21 minimum age for off-sales and separate tills for alcohol, are being knocked off one by one. However, it would not pay to be too complacent, as they could all too easily be revived if the climate of public opinion changed, as we have seen in the case of anti-smoking measures. And the slow but steady attack on drinkers through ratcheting up duty rates is likely to continue unabated.

Psst, want a fag?

So, within a few years, retailers of tobacco products will have to keep them under the counter or in closed cabinets. As is often the case, the Filthy Smoker deals with this far more eloquently (and profanely) than I could ever do. It also raises the question of exactly how smokers are meant to know which outlets stock cigarettes, what brands are available and at what prices. The tobacco manufacturers won’t really be that bothered, as it will do little to cut smoking rates and effectively kill price competition stone dead.

And is this a chilling vision of how pubs and off-licences will be in twenty years’ time, with no alcoholic drinks on display and customers having to ask for them by name? In such a climate, the opportunities to launch new products or set up new breweries would be absolutely zero.

Eric Nording

Erik Nørding is not only one of Denmark’s top master pipe-makers, but also one of a handful of the world’s most important pipe carvers. Even among the many talented pipe producers in Denmark, Nørding’s keen business sense has helped him carve more than just pipes, but also a unique market niche that has elevated his brand to top billing among collectors.

“Some Danish master carvers make beautiful custom pipes that sell for $1,000 or more,” explains the 68-year-old Nørding. “By making pipes in numbers, mine are more affordable, which puts them in the hands of many more pipe smokers. So, Nørding Pipes have become far better known.” This strategy has served Nørding well. When asked, most pipe enthusiasts will mention Nørding’s pipes as being at the pinnacle.

In the early 1960s, Nørding was one of the pioneers in the newly-emerging Danish “freehand” school of pipe creations. Inspired by an artistic interpretation of nature’s shapes, colors, and textures, these briars are totally unlike the rigid rendition of traditional pipes. Upon holding a Nørding freehand-style pipe, the fingers cannot seem to stop stroking and exploring the liquid, compound curves and contrasting textures. Startling changes in symmetry challenge the imagination to put a label on such a smokable museum piece.

It is no exaggeration to call these masterworks museum pieces - even the high-volume, popularly-priced Nørding-designed Freehands that his carvers produce. And, when you get into his “top-drawer,” custom-crafted Freehands, there’s no doubt they could stand on their own in revolving, halogen-lit glass museum cases, for even tobacco non-initiates to admire.

The Copenhagen native’s background would never lead one to predict he’d be a pipe carver. His father owned a blade-making factory, but died when Nørding was 16 and just entering training as a machinist/ blacksmith. In addition to working at the family business, he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Machine Engineering, Production Specialty (similar to our Industrial Engineering). “I studied it for our family factory, but ended up using it for my pipe-carving company... tools, machinery, and fixtures.” When Nørding was 15 he discovered the art and pleasure of pipe-smoking from his father. Though he never carved a pipe until his university days, Nørding says he had four or five carvers working for him by the time he graduated.

Soon after, a fellow pipe craftsman was so impressed with his design skills that he asked the young engineer to equip a facility for him. But, when he received the equipment, the pipe-maker was unable to pay for it. The young Nørding was sufficiently business-minded to strike an agreement to enter into a pipe-making partnership. The firm’s name was SON, a contraction of the partners’ names. Later, the partner asked to bow out, leaving the business to Nørding, who continued to operate under that name for several years.

With the Danish Freehand movement’s liberation of expression, Nørding hit his artistic stride. In years hence, the master has had many a present-day Danish master as an apprentice, including some of the custom carvers mentioned earlier.

Healey Willan

Healey Willan was a Canadian organist and composer. He composed more than 800 works including operas, symphonies, chamber music, a concerto, and pieces for band, orchestra, organ, and piano. He is best known for his religious music.

He was born in Balham, London and emigrated to Canada in 1913 to become the head of the theory department at the Canadian Conservatory of Music (now the Royal Conservatory of Music) in Toronto. In addition, he took the post of organist and choirmaster at Saint Paul's Church.

Willan became interested in the music program at another Anglican church, the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. St. Paul's was an evangelical, low church; St. Mary Magdalene's, while much smaller, was notably high church or Anglo-Catholic. By 1920 Willan was assisting with choir practice. In 1921 he resigned his post at St. Paul's and turned his attention to St. Mary Magdalene's. He set about creating a great many liturgical works for use in the church's services. He remained at St. Mary Magdalene's until shortly before his death, last directing the choir in 1967.

In 1953 he was invited to submit an anthem for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the second, O Lord, Our Governour. This remains one of his most frequently performed pieces. In 1956 he received the Lambeth Doctorate from the Archbishop of Canterbury; he became one of the first members of the Order of Canada in 1967.

People who remember Willan from his time at St Mary Magdalene's like to moderate his somewhat dourly pious public image by quoting him -- it was a mainstay of concert talks by Robert Hunter Bell -- as to his provenance: "English by birth; Canadian by adoption; Irish by extraction; Scotch by absorption."

Forcing Britain to sober up

Excellent article here from the estimable Sp!ked about the present government's Puritanical, miserabilist attitude to pubs and alcohol.

The section about how out-of-touch ministers are with how ordinary people actually live their lives is particularly good.

Nevertheless, the sheer relentlessness of these measures and proposals helps legitimise the notion that it is perfectly acceptable for government to restrict public space and personal freedom. That assumption is also based on the poisonous and corrosive notion that British citizens are inherently problematic, especially when we’ve had a few drinks. It is this genuine fear and barely concealed disgust for us that propels New Labour to carry on restricting our autonomy at every opportunity.

That fear and loathing is itself a product of New Labour’s peculiar development in British politics, as a self-referencing clique of managers and technocrats with no genuine roots or connections in wider society. As such, their isolation from ordinary people has generated a succession of Labour ministers who are, at best, embarrassingly unworldly about adult life or absolutely petrified of the city they live and work in. One minister, Caroline Flint, said she ‘couldn’t believe that people actually go out to get drunk’; Harriet Harman couldn’t face touring the London district of Peckham - an area she has represented in parliament for 26 years - without wearing a stab-proof vest. This would be funny if New Labour’s jittery nerves didn’t have such destructive consequences on our freedoms and our lifestyles.

Missing the target

In a classic case of unintended consequences, it seems that the government’s plans to restrict alcohol promotions will hit middle-class wine drinkers hardest, hardly a group noted for causing drunken mayhem on the streets. Consumers of cheap lager and cider will be relatively unscathed. And surely all those offers of “4 for £5” or “3 for £4” have done a great deal in encouraging people to sample premium bottled ales, another sector that typically appeals to moderate, responsible drinkers.

Cheaper than water

This blog posting makes the point very clearly that newspaper claims that beer is being sold by supermarkets for less than water are grossly misleading, as they are not comparing like with like. The comparison is between a very cheap bottom-end lager and a premium branded water. However, the average price of beer sold in supermarkets would still be far higher per fluid ounce than the price of water.

This is similar to the oft-repeated canard that pubs sell soft drinks for more than beer, whereas in reality, especially when you consider the actual quantities purchased, beer is on average considerably more expensive, drink for drink.

Peetered out

I foresaw back in July that the launch of 4% ABV Stella Artois would lead to the demise of Stella's existing little brother Peeterman, and so it has proven. I don't expect it will be much missed.

Inbev's efforts to develop a "family" of beers around the core Stella brand have proved a dismal failure, and you also have to wonder how Stella itself is faring now its alcohol content has been cut from 5.2% to 5.0%, just the same as every other "premium" lager. No doubt it would attract the ire of the anti-drink lobby, but some other brewer might clean up if they launched a rival brand in the 5.3% to 5.5% strength band.

Giving with one hand...

How typical of Alastair Darling to cut VAT as an economic sweetener, but at the same time increase duty on alcohol, tobacco and road fuel to offset the shortfall. Alcohol duties have gone up by a whacking 8%. Given that food and books and newspapers are zero-rated and domestic fuel already has a lower VAT rate of 5%, there’s very little left that people buy on a day-to-day basis that is actually subject to VAT. If people are worried about their job prospects, they’re hardly going to be tempted to splurge on a new car or kitchen by a 2.5% price cut. And what’s the betting that, when the VAT rate reverts to 17.5%, the duty rates won’t be reduced back to where they started?

It would have been welcome if people were given a bit of Christmas cheer from a temporary reduction in the price of drink, but obviously that does not fit with the joyless agenda of the New Puritans. Indeed, while the duty hike has been presented as simply maintaining the retail price, in many cases, particularly spirits, it will actually increase the price in the shops. Also, given the way pub licensees often work out retail price by applying a mark-up to the wholesale price, it could easily end up putting prices up in pubs too.

A silver lining?

Inevitably the current “credit crunch”, “economic downturn” or whatever is going to lead to the closure of large numbers of pubs. But, ironically it might end up being the saviour of a few. Especially in the south-east, but increasingly in other parts of the country, pubs that are viable enough in themselves have been closed because the site was more valuable for residential development. But, with the demand for property having fallen through the floor, that is often no longer the case. One such is the Ryecroft Arms in Cheadle Hulme, the former Conway, that had been slated by Hydes for closure and redevelopment, but now seems to have been given a new lease of life. The report of the local planning committee makes interesting reading – the proposed redevelopment seems to have been rather misconceived and the appetite of the developers for pushing it through will now have evaporated.

But the Conway/Ryecroft Arms was never a particularly appealing pub, and it does raise the question, which might lead to another post, as to why post-war “estate pubs” – and indeed many of their inter-wars counterparts – have proved so intrinsically unappealing in the long term.

United we stand

Some very wise words from Archie Norman, former Chief Executive of ASDA, about the need for on and off-trade to stand together to resist government restrictions.

As I have argued, both are part of one overall drinks trade, and the right of adult consumers to consume alcohol responsibly, whether at home or in the pub, is now under serious threat from government action, egged on by the anti-alcohol lobby. It is not pubs vs supermarkets, it is drinkers vs banners.

Michael Jordan

Michael Jeffrey Jordan is a retired American professional basketball player and active businessman. His biography on the National Basketball Association (NBA) website states, "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time."[1] Jordan was one of the most effectively marketed athletes of his generation, and was instrumental in popularizing the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.

After a stand-out career at the University of North Carolina, Jordan joined the NBA's Chicago Bulls in 1984. He quickly emerged as one of the stars of the league, entertaining crowds with his prolific scoring. His leaping ability, illustrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line at Slam Dunk Contests, earned him the nicknames "Air Jordan" and "His Airness." He also gained a reputation as one of the best defensive players in basketball. In 1991, he won his first NBA championship with the Bulls, and followed that achievement with titles in 1992 and 1993, securing a "three-peat." Though Jordan abruptly left the NBA at the beginning of the 1993-94 NBA season to pursue a career in baseball, he rejoined the Bulls in 1995 and led them to three additional championships (1996, 1997, and 1998) as well as an NBA-record 72 regular-season wins in the 1995–96 season. Jordan retired for a second time in 1999, but he returned for two more NBA seasons in 2001 as a member of the Washington Wizards.

Jordan's individual accolades and accomplishments include five MVP awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances and three All-Star MVP, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, six NBA Finals MVP awards, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA record for highest career regular season scoring average with 30.12 points per game, as well as averaging a record 33.4 points per game in the playoffs. In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN, and was second to Babe Ruth on the Associated Press's list of athletes of the century. He will be eligible for induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.

Jordan is also noted for his product endorsements. He fueled the success of Nike's Air Jordan sneakers, which were introduced in 1985 and remain popular today. Jordan also starred in the 1996 feature film Space Jam. He is currently a part-owner and Managing Member of Basketball Operations of the Charlotte Bobcats in North Carolina.

Ralph Inbar

Ralph Inbar was een Nederlands televisieregisseur en -programmamaker. Hij vertrok na zijn middelbare school naar Israël, om daar tot 1963 de kunstacademie van Jeruzalem te volgen. Hierna volgde nog de filmacademie van Parijs.

Ralph Inbar keerde in 1964 terug naar Nederland. Hij begon als regisseur te werken voor de VARA. Hij regisseerde onder meer de liveshows van Rudi Carrell. Ook regisseerde hij een programma van zijn voormalige echtgenote Sonja Barend.

In 1968 vestigde hij zich weer in Israël, waar hij hielp bij de oprichting van de Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), indertijd de eerste en lange tijd enige televisiezender van dit land.

Vanaf 1972 was Ralph Inbar in dienst van de TROS. Behalve Bananasplit dat eind jaren tachtig goed was voor vijf miljoen kijkers per show, maakte hij programma's als Music All In, Fenklup, Take 2, Zelfportret en TV Masqué. Voor TV Masqué ontving hij in 1992 een Gouden Roos op het televisiefestival in Montreux.

Inbar bleef alle jaren een gedeelte van zijn tijd doorbrengen in Israël. Hij was een graag geziene gast in het Israëlische parallelprogramma van Banana Split, dat ook fragmenten van zijn Nederlandse programma's uitzond. In 1999 was hij artistiek directeur van het Eurovisiesongfestival in Jeruzalem, dat naar Israël was gekomen door de winst van Dana International.

Op 15 maart 2004 overleed Ralph Inbar in een ziekenhuis in het Duitse Hamburg, waar hij twee maanden eerder een hartoperatie had ondergaan. Hij werd op 19 maart 2004 begraven in Israël.

Harry Mulisch

Harry Mulisch is a Dutch author. Along with W.F. Hermans and Gerard Reve, he is considered one of the "Great Three" of Dutch postwar literature. He has written novels, plays, essays, poems, and philosophical reflections.

Mulisch was born in Haarlem and has been living in Amsterdam since 1958, after the death of his father in 1957. Mulisch's father was from Austria-Hungary and emigrated to the Netherlands after the First World War. During the German occupation in World War II he worked for a German bank, which also dealt with confiscated Jewish assets. His mother, Alice Schwarz, was Jewish. Mulisch and his mother escaped transport to a concentration camp thanks to Mulisch's father's collaboration with the Nazis. Due to the curious nature of his parents' positions, Mulisch has claimed that he is the Second World War. Mulisch was mostly raised by his parent's housemaid, Frieda Falk.

A frequent theme in his work is the Second World War. His father had worked for the Germans during the war and went to prison for three years afterwards. As the war encompassed most of Mulisch' puberty, it had a defining influence on his life and work. In 1963, he wrote a non-fiction work about the Eichmann case: The case 40/61. Major works set against the backdrop of the Second World War are De Aanslag, Het stenen bruidsbed, and Siegfried.

Additionally, Mulisch often incorporates ancient legends or myths in his writings, drawing on Greek mythology (e.g. in De Elementen), Jewish mysticism (in De ontdekking van de Hemel and De Procedure), well-known urban legends and politics (Mulisch is politically left-wing, notably defending Fidel Castro since the Cuban revolution). Mulisch is widely read and (according to his critics) often flaunts his philosophical and even scientific knowledge.

Mulisch gained international recognition with the movie De Aanslag (The Assault), (1986) which was based on his eponymous book. It received an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best foreign movie and has been translated in more than twenty languages.

His novel De ontdekking van de Hemel (1992) was filmed in 2001 as The Discovery of Heaven by Jeroen Krabbé, starring Stephen Fry.

Amongst many awards he has received for individual works and his total body of work, the most important is the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren (Prize of Dutch Literature, an official lifetime achievement award) in 1995.

H.T. Webster

Harold Tucker Webster was born in 1885 in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He started his comics drawing career when he was twenty years old by getting published in an outdoor magazine called Recreation. Then he got a job as a sports cartoonist at the Denver Post. Not much later, Webster did some freelance work for the Chicago News, followed by jobs at the Chicago Inter-Ocean and the Cincinnati Post, where he got to draw political cartoons.

In 1912, Webster landed a prestigious job at the New York Tribune, where he created two of his most famous comics, 'Poker Portraits' and 'Life's Darkest Moment'. After a short stint at the New York World, where he created 'The Man in the Brown Derby', he made his comics comeback at the Tribune, creating his best-known comic, 'Timid Soul'. Harold Webster kept working on the Timid Soul Sunday comic until his death in 1953.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was an author most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to an English father of Irish descent, Charles Altamont Doyle, and an Irish mother, née Mary Foley, who had married in 1855. Although he is now referred to as "Conan Doyle", the origin of this compound surname is uncertain. Conan Doyle's father was a chronic alcoholic, and was the only member of his family, who apart from fathering a brilliant son, never accomplished anything of note. Conan Doyle was sent to the Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst, at the age of eight. He then went on to Stonyhurst College, but by the time he left the school in 1875, he had rejected Christianity to become an agnostic.

From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, including a period working in the town of Aston (now a district of Birmingham). While studying, he also began writing short stories; his first published story appeared in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal before he was 20. Following his term at university, he served as a ship's doctor on a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his doctorate on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885.

In 1882, he joined former classmate George Budd as his partner at a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Conan Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice. Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than £10 to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea. The practice was initially not very successful; while waiting for patients, he again began writing stories. His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university professor, Joseph Bell. Future short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the English Strand Magazine. Interestingly, Rudyard Kipling congratulated Conan Doyle on his success, asking "Could this be my old friend, Dr. Joe?" Sherlock Holmes, however, was even more closely modelled after the famous Edgar Allan Poe character, C. Auguste Dupin.

While living in Southsea he played football for an amateur side, Portsmouth Association Football Club, as a goalkeeper. (This club disbanded in 1894 and had no connection with the Portsmouth F.C. of today, which was founded in 1898.) Conan Doyle was also a keen cricketer, and between 1900 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the MCC. His highest score was 43 against London County in 1902. He was an occasional bowler who took just one first-class wicket. Also a keen golfer, Conan Doyle was elected Captain of Crowborough Beacon Golf Club, East Sussex, for the year 1910.

In 1885, he married Louisa (or Louise) Hawkins, known as "Touie", who suffered from tuberculosis and died on 4 July 1906. He married Jean Elizabeth Leckie in 1907, whom he had first met and fallen in love with in 1897 but had maintained a platonic relationship with her out of loyalty to his first wife. Jean died in London on 27 June 1940.

Conan Doyle had five children, two with his first wife (1) Mary Louise (28 January 1889 – 12 June 1976) and (2) Arthur Alleyne Kingsley, known as Kingsley (15 November 1892 – 28 October 1918), and three with his second wife, (3) Denis Percy Stewart (17 March 1909 – 9 March 1955), second husband in 1936 of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani (circa 1910 – 19 February 1987; former sister-in-law of Barbara Hutton), (4) Adrian Malcolm (1910–1970) and (5) Jean Lena Annette (1912–1997).

In 1890, Conan Doyle studied the eye in Vienna; he moved to London in 1891 to set up a practice as an ophthalmologist. He wrote in his autobiography that not a single patient crossed his door. This gave him more time for writing, and in November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, saying, "You may do what you deem fit, but the crowds will not take this lightheartedly." In December 1893, he did so in order to dedicate more of his time to more "important" works (his historical novels).

Holmes and Moriarty apparently plunged to their deaths together down a waterfall in the story, "The Final Problem". Public outcry led him to bring the character back; Conan Doyle returned to the story in "The Adventure of the Empty House", with the explanation that only Moriarty had fallen but, since Holmes had other dangerous enemies, he had arranged to be temporarily "dead" also. Holmes ultimately appeared in a total of 56 short stories and four Conan Doyle novels (he has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors).

Following the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century and the condemnation from around the world over the United Kingdom's conduct, Conan Doyle wrote a short pamphlet titled, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, which justified the UK's role in the Boer war, and was widely translated.

Conan Doyle believed that it was this pamphlet that resulted in 1902 in his being knighted and appointed Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey. He also in 1900 wrote the longer book, The Great Boer War. During the early years of the 20th century, Sir Arthur twice ran for Parliament as a Liberal Unionist, once in Edinburgh and once in the Hawick Burghs, but although he received a respectable vote he was not elected.

Conan Doyle was involved in the campaign for the reform of the Congo Free State, led by the journalist E. D. Morel and the diplomat Roger Casement. He wrote The Crime of the Congo in 1909, a long pamphlet in which he denounced the horrors in that country. He became acquainted with Morel and Casement, taking inspiration from them for two of the main characters in the novel, The Lost World (1912).

He broke with both when Morel became one of the leaders of the pacifist movement during the First World War, and when Casement was convicted of treason against the UK during the Easter Rising. Conan Doyle tried, unsuccessfully, to save Casement from the death penalty, arguing that he had been driven mad and was not responsible for his actions.

Conan Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice, and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes that they were accused of. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named George Edalji, who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.

It was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907, so not only did Conan Doyle help George Edalji, his work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice. The story of Conan Doyle and Edalji is told in fictional form in Julian Barnes' 2005 novel, Arthur & George.

The second case, that of Oscar Slater, a German Jew and gambling-den operator convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908, excited Conan Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general sense that Slater was framed.

After the death of his wife Louisa in 1906, and the death of his son Kingsley, his brother Innes, his two brothers-in-law (one of whom was E W Hornung, the creator of the literary character Raffles), and his two nephews shortly after World War I, Conan Doyle sank into depression. He found solace supporting Spiritualism and its alleged scientific proof of existence beyond the grave.

According to the History Channel program Houdini: Unlocking the Mystery (which briefly explored the friendship between the two), Conan Doyle became involved with Spiritualism after the deaths of his son and his brother. Kingsley Doyle died from pneumonia on 28 October 1918, which he contracted during his convalescence after being seriously wounded during the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Brigadier-General Innes Doyle died in February 1919, also from pneumonia. Sir Arthur became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a Professor Challenger novel on the subject, The Land of Mist.

His book, The Coming of the Fairies (1921) shows he was apparently convinced of the veracity of the Cottingley Fairies photographs, which he reproduced in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits.

In his The History of Spiritualism (1926) Conan Doyle praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materialisations produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina "Margery" Crandon.

His work on this topic was one of the reasons that one of his short story collections, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, was banned in the Soviet Union in 1929 for supposed occultism. This ban was later lifted. Russian actor Vasily Livanov later received an Order of the British Empire for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle was friends for a time with the American magician Harry Houdini, who himself became a prominent opponent of the Spiritualist movement in the 1920s following the death of his beloved mother. Although Houdini insisted that Spiritualist mediums employed trickery (and consistently attempted to expose them as frauds), Conan Doyle became convinced that Houdini himself possessed supernatural powers, a view expressed in Conan Doyle's The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini was apparently unable to convince Conan Doyle that his feats were simply magic tricks, leading to a bitter public falling out between the two.

Richard Milner, an American historian of science, has presented a case that Conan Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner says that Conan Doyle had a motive, namely revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics, and that The Lost World contains several encrypted clues regarding his involvement in the hoax.

Conan Doyle was found clutching his chest in the family garden at "Windlesham", Crowborough, on 7 July 1930. He soon died of his heart attack, aged 71, and is buried in the Church Yard at Minstead in the New Forest, Hampshire, England.

Ronald Knox

Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was born in Leicestershire, England into an Anglican family (his father was Edmund Arbuthnott Knox who became bishop of Manchester), and was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1910, he became a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1912, and was appointed chaplain of Trinity, but left in 1917 when he was received as a Roman Catholic. He explained his spiritual journey in two privately printed books, Apologia (1917), and A Spiritual Aeneid (1918). In 1918 he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest; in 1919 he joined the staff of St Edmund's College, Ware, Hertfordshire, remaining there until 1926.

He wrote and broadcast on Christianity and other subjects. While a Roman Catholic chaplain at the University of Oxford (1926-1939) and as domestic prelate to the Pope 1936, he wrote classic detective stories. In 1929 he codified the rules for detective stories into a 'Decalogue' of ten commandments, see Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

Monsignor Knox singlehandedly translated the St. Jerome Latin Vulgate Bible into English. His works on religious themes include: Some Loose Stones (1913), Reunion All Round (1914), The Spiritual Aeneid (1918), The Belief of Catholics (1927), Caliban in Grub Street (1930), Heaven and Charing Cross (1935), Let Dons Delight (1939), and Captive Flames (1940). Monsignor Knox's Roman Catholicism caused his father to cut him out of his will. See Fitzgerald, The Knox Brothers (1977) at p. 261. This did not make much difference to his finances, however, as Knox earned a good income from his detective novels.

An essay in Knox's Essays in Satire (1928), "Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes", was the first of the genre of mock-serious critical writings on Sherlock Holmes and mock-historical studies in which the existence of Holmes, Watson, et al. is assumed. Another of these essays (The Authorship of "In Memoriam") purports to prove that Tennyson's poem was actually written by Queen Victoria. Another satirical essay ("Reunion All Round") mocked the fabled Anglican tolerance in the form of an appeal to the Anglican Church to absorb everyone from Muslims to atheists, and even Catholics after murdering Irish children and banning Irish marriage and reproduction. Knox was led to the Catholic Church by the English writer G. K. Chesterton, before Chesterton himself became a Catholic. When Chesterton was received into Roman Catholic Church, he in turn was influenced by Knox. Knox delivered the homily for Chesterton's Requiem Mass in Westminster Cathedral.

In 1953 he visited the Oxfords in Zanzibar and the Actons in Rhodesia. It was on this trip that he began his translation of the Imitation of Christ and, upon his return to Mells, his translation of Thérèse de Lisieux's Autobiography of a Soul. He also began a work of apologetics intended to reach a wider than the student audience of his Belief of Catholics (1927). But all his activities were curtailed by his sudden and serious illness early in 1957. At the invitation of his old friend, Harold Macmillan, he stayed at 10 Downing Street while in London to consult a specialist. The doctor confirmed the diagnosis of incurable cancer.

He died on August 24, 1957 and his body was brought to Westminster Cathedral. Bishop Craven said the requiem at which Father Martin D'Arcy, a Jesuit, preached the panegyric. Knox was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew's Church, Mells.

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck III was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and the novella Of Mice and Men, published in 1937. In all, he wrote twenty-five books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and several collections of short stories. In 1962 Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Steinbeck grew up in the Salinas Valley region of California, a culturally diverse place of rich migratory and immigrant history. This upbringing imparted a regionalistic flavor to his writing, giving many of his works a distinct sense of place. Steinbeck moved briefly to New York City, but soon returned home to California to begin his career as a writer. Most of his earlier work dealt with subjects familiar to him from his formative years. An exception was his first novel Cup of Gold which concerns the pirate Henry Morgan, whose adventures had captured Steinbeck's imagination as a child.

In his subsequent novels, Steinbeck found a more authentic voice by drawing upon direct memories of his life in California. Later he used real historical conditions and events in the first half of 20th century America, which he had experienced first-hand as a reporter. Steinbeck often populated his stories with struggling characters; his works examined the lives of the working class and migrant workers during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. His later body of work reflected his wide range of interests, including marine biology, politics, religion, history, and mythology. One of his last published works was Travels with Charley, a travelogue of a road trip he took in 1960 to rediscover America. He died in 1968 in New York of a heart attack and his ashes are interred in Salinas.

Seventeen of his works, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), and East of Eden (1952), went on to become Hollywood films (some appeared multiple times, i.e., as remakes), and Steinbeck also achieved success as a Hollywood writer, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Story in 1944 for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat.

John Ernst Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German American and Irish American descent. Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck (i.e. Grosssteinbeck), Steinbeck's grandfather, changed the family name from Großsteinbeck to Steinbeck when he migrated to the United States. The family's farm in Heiligenhaus / Germany is still today named "Großsteinbeck". His father, John Steinbeck, Sr., served as the Monterey County Treasurer while his mother, Olive (Hamilton) Steinbeck, a former school teacher, fostered Steinbeck's love of reading and writing.

At the time of his childhood, he lived in a small Californian town. Though growing larger, more prosperous, and modern, it was still essentially a rough-and-tumble frontier place, set amid some of the world's most fertile land. Steinbeck spent his summers working on nearby ranches and later with migrants on the huge Spreckels ranch. During this time, Steinbeck became aware of the harsher aspects of the migrant life in the region and of the darker side of human nature – material which was to be explored in works such as Of Mice and Men. He also explored the surrounding Salinas Valley, walking across local forests, fields and farms. This material was to provide background for most of his short stories.

Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919. He then attended Stanford University intermittently until 1925, eventually leaving without a degree, as he disliked the university lifestyle. From Stanford, he traveled to New York City and held various temporary jobs while pursuing his dream as a writer. However, he was unable to get any of his work published and returned to California where for a time he was resort handyman in Lake Tahoe. John Steinbeck sometimes lived with the people he would be writing about. For example, he went to the Gulf of Mexico and heard about the story which "The Pearl" is based on. Also, he lived and worked with workers at Oklahoma before writing "The Grapes of Wrath".

In California he continued to write. His first novel, Cup of Gold was published in 1929. It is based on the privateer Henry Morgan's life and death. It centers on Morgan's assault and sacking of the city of Panama, sometimes referred to as the 'Cup of Gold', and the woman fairer than the sun reputed to be found there.

After Cup of Gold Steinbeck produced three shorter works between 1931 and 1933: The Pastures of Heaven, published in 1932, consisted of twelve interconnected stories about a valley in Monterey, California, which was discovered by a Spanish corporal while chasing runaway American Indian slaves. In 1933 Steinbeck brought out two works: The Red Pony is a short 100-page, four-chapter story, which recollects memories from Steinbeck's childhood. To a God Unknown follows the life of a homesteader and his family in California, depicting a character with a primal and pagan worship of the land he works. He lived for many years in a cottage in Pacific Grove owned by his father, John Sr., who provided John paper on which to write his manuscripts.

Steinbeck achieved his first critical success with the novel Tortilla Flat (1935), which won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. The book portrays the adventures of a young group of classless and usually homeless men in Monterey, set in the era after World War I, just before U.S. prohibition. These characters, who are portrayed in ironic comparison to mythologic knights on a quest, reject nearly all of the standard morals of American society in enjoyment of a dissolute life centering around wine, lust, comradery, and petty thievery. The book was made into a film of the same name in 1942, starring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, and John Garfield whom was a very good friend of John.


Steinbeck began to write a series of "California novels" and Dust Bowl fiction, set among common people during the Great Depression. These included In Dubious Battle in 1936, Of Mice and Men in 1937, and The Grapes of Wrath in 1939.

Of Mice and Men (1937), his novella about the dreams of a pair of migrant laborers working the California soil, was critically acclaimed.

The stage adaptation of Of Mice and Men was a hit, starring Broderick Crawford as the mentally child-like but physically powerful itinerant farmhand "Lennie," and Wallace Ford as Lennie's companion, "George." However, Steinbeck refused to travel from his home in California to attend any performance of the play during its New York run, telling Kaufman that the play as it existed in his own mind was "perfect" and that anything presented on stage would only be a disappointment. Steinbeck would write two more stage plays (The Moon Is Down and Burning Bright).

Of Mice and Men was rapidly adapted into a 1939 Hollywood film, in which Lon Chaney, Jr. (who had portrayed the role in the Los Angeles production of the play) was cast as Lennie and Burgess Meredith as "George." Steinbeck followed this wave of success with The Grapes of Wrath (1939), based on newspaper articles he had written in San Francisco. The novel would be considered by many to be his finest work. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940, even as it was made into a notable film directed by John Ford, starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, who was nominated for an Academy Award for the part.

The success of The Grapes of Wrath, however, was not free of controversy, as Steinbeck's liberal political views, portrayal of the ugly side of capitalism, and mythical reinterpretation of the historical events of the Dust Bowl migrations led to backlash against the author, especially close to home.[8] In fact, claiming the book was both obscene and misrepresented conditions in the county, the Kern County Board of Supervisors banned the book from the county's public schools and libraries in August 1939. This ban lasted until January 1941.

Of the controversy, Steinbeck wrote, "The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. The latest is a rumor started by them that the Okies hate me and have threatened to kill me for lying about them. I'm frightened at the rolling might of this damned thing. It is completely out of hand; I mean a kind of hysteria about the book is growing that is not healthy."

The film versions of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men (by two different movie studios) were in production simultaneously, allowing Steinbeck to spend a full day on the set of The Grapes of Wrath and the next day on the set of Of Mice and Men.

In 1943, after thirteen years of marriage, Steinbeck divorced his first wife, Carol Henning. He married Gwyn Conger that same year, a union which produced Steinbeck's only children, Thomas ("Thom") Myles Steinbeck in 1944 and John Steinbeck IV (Catbird), in 1946. They divorced in 1948. Two years later, Steinbeck married Elaine (Anderson) Scott, the ex-wife of actor Zachary Scott. They would remain married until his death in 1968.

In 1940, Steinbeck's interest in marine biology and his friendship with Ed Ricketts led him to a voyage around the Gulf of California, also known as the "Sea of Cortez," where they collected biological specimens. Steinbeck's narrative portion of the total expedition report (with some philosophical additions by Ricketts) was later published as The Log from the Sea of Cortez, and describes the daily experiences of the trip. The narrative-log plus the full catalog of the marine invertebrates taken, had earlier been published as a naturalist's narrative and biological catalog of the invertebrate life of the Gulf of California. While it remains a classic of an earlier tradition in biological reporting, in 1942 it did not sell well, in part due to failure to find a popular audience.

Ed Ricketts had a tremendous impact on Steinbeck's writing. Not only did he help Steinbeck while he was in the process of writing, but he aided Steinbeck in his social adventures. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast, to collect the biological specimens which Ricketts sold for a living, and to give Steinbeck a vacation from his writing.

Ricketts' impact on Steinbeck was so great that Steinbeck based his character "Doc" in the novels Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday on Ricketts. Steinbeck's close relationship with Ricketts would end with the coming of the second World War, and as Steinbeck moved away from Salinas, California, to pursue a life away from his wife Carol.

During World War II, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. It was at that time he became friends with Will Lang Jr. of Time/Life magazine. During the war, Steinbeck saw action in accompanying some of the commando raids of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.'s Beach Jumpers program, which (among other things) launched small-unit diversion operations against German-held islands in the Mediterranean. As a war correspondent, Steinbeck would certainly have been executed if he had been captured with the automatic weapon which he routinely carried on such missions, but all were successful. These missions would help to earn Fairbanks a number of decorations, but as a civilian, Steinbeck's role in these doings went officially unrecognized. Some of Steinbeck's writings from his correspondence days were collected and made into the novelistic documentary Once There Was A War (1958).

During the war, he continued to work in film, writing Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944), and the film A Medal for Benny (1945), about paisanos from Tortilla Flat going to war. John Steinbeck later requested that his name be removed from the credits of Lifeboat, because he believed the final version of the film had racist undertones.

His novel The Moon is Down (1942), about the Socrates-inspired spirit of resistance in a Nazi-occupied village in northern Europe, was made into a film almost immediately. It was presumed that the unnamed country of the novel was Norway, and in 1945 Steinbeck received the Haakon VII Medal of freedom for his literary contributions to the Norwegian resistance movement.

After the war, he wrote The Pearl (1947), already knowing it would be filmed. The story first appeared in the December 1945 issue of Woman's Home Companion magazine as "The Pearl of the World." It was illustrated by John Alan Maxwell. The novel is an imaginative telling of a story which Steinbeck had heard in La Paz, as related in The Log From the Sea of Cortez, which he described in Chapter 11 as being "so much like a parable that it almost can't be". Steinbeck traveled to Mexico for the filming; on this trip he would be inspired by the story of Emiliano Zapata, and subsequently wrote a film script (Viva Zapata!) directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn.

In 1948 Steinbeck again toured the Soviet Union, together with renowned photographer Robert Capa. They visited Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi, Batumi and the ruined Stalingrad. He wrote a humorous report-book about their experiences, A Russian Journal, which was illustrated with Capa's photos. Avoiding political topics and reporting about the life of simple Soviet peasants and workers, Steinbeck tried to generate more understanding toward people living in the Soviet Union, in a time when anti-Communism was widespread in the U.S. and the danger of war between the two countries was imminent. In the same year he was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Following his divorce from Gwyndolyn Conger and the sudden, tragic death of his close friend Ed Ricketts (who perished as a result of his car being hit by a train), Steinbeck wrote one of his most popular novels, East of Eden (1952). This book, which he wrote to give his sons some idea of their heritage, was the book he repeatedly wrote of as his best, and his life's work.

In 1952, Steinbeck appeared as the on-screen narrator of 20th Century Fox's film, O. Henry's Full House. Although Steinbeck later admitted he was uncomfortable before the camera, he provided interesting introductions to several filmed adaptations of short stories by the legendary writer O. Henry. About the same time, Steinbeck recorded readings of several of his short stories for Columbia Records; despite some obvious stiffness, the recordings provide a literal record of Steinbeck's deep, resonant voice.

Following the success of Viva Zapata!, Steinbeck collaborated with Kazan on the theatrical production of East of Eden, James Dean's film debut.

Steinbeck's next to last major work, Travels with Charley (subtitle: In Search of America) is a travelogue of a coast-to-coast road trip he took across the United States in 1960, in a camper truck, with his standard poodle Charley. In the work, Steinbeck misses his lost youth and lost roots, and both criticizes and praises America on many levels. According to Thom Steinbeck, the author's older son, the real reason for the trip was that Steinbeck knew he was dying and wanted to see his country one last time. Thom says he was surprised that his stepmother (Steinbeck's wife) allowed Steinbeck to make the trip, since Steinbeck's heart disease put him at risk of dying without warning at any time.

Steinbeck's last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, was written in 1961. The book examines moral decline in America through a tragic story. The book reflected Steinbeck's increasing concern over the loss of integrity amongst members of society and the subsequent moral decay; in the book, the protagonist Ethan, like Steinbeck grows discontented both with his own moral decline and of those around him. The book is quite different in tone to Steinbeck's amoral and ecological description of the innocent thievery of the protagonists of his earlier works such as Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. Like many of Steinbeck's works, his last one was critically savaged. Many reviewers saw the quality and importance of the novel but were again disappointed, as many were still hoping for a work similar to the Grapes of Wrath.

In 1962, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his “realistic and imaginative writing, combining as it does sympathetic humor and keen social perception.” Privately, he felt he did not deserve the honor. In his acceptance speech, he said:

the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

—Steinbeck Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
In September 1964, Steinbeck was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1967, at the behest of Newsday magazine, Steinbeck went to Vietnam to report on the war there. Thinking of the Vietnam War as a heroic venture, he was considered a Hawk for his position on that war. His sons both served in Vietnam prior to his death, and Steinbeck visited one son in the battlefield (at one point being allowed to man a machine-gun watch position at night at a firebase, while his son and other members of his platoon slept).

The gravesite of Steinbeck's ashes in Salinas CemeteryOn December 20, 1968 John Steinbeck died in New York City. His death is listed as heart disease or heart attack. An autopsy showed nearly complete occlusion of Steinbeck's main coronary arteries.

A missed opportunity?

You can’t really blame Carlsberg for wanting to close the Tetley brewery in Leeds, given that it is on a prime city-centre site. But surely there is a missed opportunity there. Cask is the only growth sector in the beer market, and Tetley’s is one of the very few beers brewed by the international brewers that still has any credibility. If they could have found a compatible alternative brewing site in Yorkshire, they had a wonderful opportunity to make Tetley’s the best-selling cask beer in Britain. Just more proof that executives obsessed with international mega-brands have no idea how the British beer market actually works.

Dedication to drinking

It's hard to beat this story for commitment to pubgoing and drinking:

Drinkers on longest ever pub crawl reach 14,000th pub

No doubt Dawn Primarolo or some other joyless New Labour health minister will condemn it for setting a bad example and encouraging drinking above "safe" levels.

It was also interesting that in a radio interview they admitted to doing most of this pub-crawling by car. Now, I'm sure they're well aware of the need to avoid falling foul of the law, but can we really believe the designated driver doesn't partake of the occasional half?

Real innovation

It’s amazing how this BBC news article about innovation in the beer market manages to completely avoid mentioning real ale. In reality, it is the cask sector that is seeing by far the most genuine innovation, with a wealth of new styles, flavours and ingredients and most established brewers introducing a programme of seasonal beers. In contrast, any innovation from the global brewers is either gimmicks or bringing in new brands from other countries. And is a Lithuanian lager really that different from a Polish lager? Unfortunately, despite being the only growth area in the beer market, the cask sector seems to have dropped off the media radar as it is seen as terminally unfashionable and outdated. However, growing by stealth may not be such a bad thing...

The bladder leash

I see a House of Commons committee has rightly criticised local authorities for closing large numbers of public toilets, something the government seems happy simply to stand by and allow to happen. There was also an excellent leader on the subject in the Daily Telegraph.

Obviously beer drinkers will be well aware of the need for some relief after consuming a few pints, and I’m convinced that the declining expectation of being able to find a toilet when you need one is a factor in people, especially those in middle age and above, being more reluctant to go drinking outside the home. However, there is a more serious issue here. The average person needs to urinate about once every two to two and a half hours and many, such as the elderly, pregnant women and those with bladder or bowel conditions may need a toilet more frequently than that. If toilets are non-existent or hard to find, it greatly curtails people’s ability to venture outside the house, and effectively puts them on what has been described as a “bladder leash”.

A good example of this tendency is the recent announcement by Derby City Council that they are planning to close all but one of the public toilets in the city centre. The City of Manchester to its shame already has but a solitary conventional public toilet in the entire city centre, and that (near the Town Hall) well away from the main shopping centre *.

When local councils are still happily employing “five-a-day co-ordinators” and sending out glossy magazines promoting their “achievements” it is impossible to believe they can’t find the money to provide a few decent public bogs. All too often council officers seem keener to protect their own staff and empires than frontline services, and then blame cutbacks on the government.

This is a prime example of the eroding quality of life in modern Britain and something that needs to be urgently addressed.

* I am aware that Manchester also has four or five automated “superloos” in the city centre, but I really don’t regard these as an acceptable replacement for conventional toilets, and they certainly don’t adequately address the issue of providing male urinals.

The walk of shame

Once again the Filthy Smoker is spot on in his attack on the proposal that has been touted for alcohol-only checkouts in supermarkets. Once you look beyond the swearing, he and I seem to have a great deal on which we agree.

Of course, such a move would have the unintended consequence of creating express lanes for drinkers who would no longer have to queue up behind folks buying vast quantities of disposable nappies and vegetables and exchanging a purseful of discount coupons.

Anyone fancy a twother?

Interesting report today that a consultation on drinks measures is proposing the introduction of a two-thirds of a pint beer measure. As I said here in the past:

...there’s a very good case for also allowing measures of two-thirds of a pint to be served, slightly bigger than the commonplace 330 ml bottles and almost exactly the same as the 12 US fluid ounces that is usual in America. It would have enough size advantage over a half to seem a more worthwhile drink, but be sufficiently smaller than a pint to leave you considerably more sober and less bloated. It would also be appealing to drinkers in multi-beer alehouses who want to sample a range of beers without ending up under the table.

It would also (whisper it softly) allow the law-abiding driver to have three worthwhile glasses of beer rather than two.

But I suspect in practice it would lead to a notable drop-off in on-trade beer sales, so watch out for a lukewarm reception from trade bodies, who no doubt will whinge over the cost of acquiring new glassware. It would be interesting to know what proportion of pub customers simply drink one pint during their visit, and so thus would be prime candidates for downsizing.

Fifty pence too much

It's disappointing that The Publican have decided to put their weight behind a campaign to impose a 50p per unit minimum price on all alcoholic drinks. Do they not realise that these beggar-my-neighbour tactics will damage the entire drinks trade and simply play into the hands of the neo-prohibitionists?

For many people, drinking in the pub is quite simply not a realistic option, and so to put up the price of a pensioner’s bottle of cheap Scotch from £8.99 to £14 – an overnight rise of over 50% – will reflect very badly indeed. In reality, in the midst of a recession, no government is going to impose swingeing increases on the price of take-home alcohol that would hit working-class families very hard in the pocket.

This wouldn’t free up a single extra penny for people to spend in pubs, and it is hard to see how in practice it would do anything to help their business. The businesses who would be licking their lips are the manufacturers of home brew kits and the owners of discount booze warehouses in Calais. It is one thing to use minimum pricing as a way of curbing cheap multibuy offers, something else entirely to use it to raise the general price level of mainstream products.

If your business is struggling, you need to look at ways of increasing its appeal, not try to prop it up by hobbling the competition.

The Puritans are coming

Nail very firmly hit on head here by the Filthy Smoker on the wonderful (but distinctly foul-mouthed) Devil's Kitchen blog.

Coming soon to a bar near you?

When faced with a problem demanding a solution, human ingenuity can be an impressive thing, and in response to the smoking ban it’s now come up with the E-Cigarette. This looks like a normal filter cigarette, but contains a battery and an electronic mechanism to release a controlled, smoke-free dose of nicotine into the “smoker’s” lungs. As there is no smoke, it’s entirely legal to use indoors. As much of the support for the smoking ban was based on naked, dog-in-the-manger hatred that defied rational analysis, I look forward to the spluttering outrage of antismokers seeing people using these devices in pubs and bars. They’ll probably then campaign to ban them, of course.

Seen but not heard (again)

There’s a lot of space devoted in the press today to the launch of the latest Good Pub Guide, with editor Alasdair Aird saying they had received a record number of complaints about unruly children in pubs, something with which I have great sympathy.

Surely the time has come when publicans must recognise this concern and do something to address it. Obviously nowadays it’s unrealistic to expect all pubs to be child-free, but there’s no real reason for children to be in non-food pubs at all, and in those serving food, why can’t a certain proportion of the interior be set aside for adults?

There’s a lot to be said for Wetherspoon’s policy of limiting adult diners accompanying children to two drinks as well, so the parties move on once they’ve finished eating. Responsible adults should not be taking their children out with them for a prolonged drinking session.

Sigh of relief confirmed

Excellent news for pubs and pubgoers that the government have finally confirmed they have no current plans to reduce the drink-drive limit. Given that most of the great and the good seem to have expressed support for this, I’m slightly puzzled as to what the thought processes are behind it, as I was when it was more seriously proposed ten years ago. I strongly suspect that the senior police officers are in private much more sceptical than they are in public, and recognise that in practice it would do little or nothing to reduce casualties while forfeiting much public support.

The government would also have had to grasp the nettle of whether to impose mandatory bans at 50 mg. If they did, we would have a far stricter drink-drive régime than any of our major Continental neighbours, whereas if drivers were only subjected to points and a fine between 50 and 80 mg, as is usual in the Continent, the unholy alliance of anti-drink and anti-car pressure groups would have accused them of letting drink-drivers off the hook. Either way, it’s opening a can of worms.

The combination of the financial crisis and the slump in Labour’s electoral support probably led them to conclude it just wasn’t worth pursuing at the moment. But I’m sure the threat hasn’t entirely gone away…

The news report also parrots the oft-heard nonsense that “Britain is to become the only European country that allows motorists to have at least one alcoholic drink and still be legally fit to drive.” This in fact is quite untrue - a 50 mg limit would still allow most people, unless very lightly-built, to consume a pint of ordinary-strength beer, a medium glass of wine, or a double whisky, and still drive legally. And surely a half of mild counts as an alcoholic drink, and you might be able to get away with three of those.

£2.23!

I took a look today at the Roebuck in Urmston, one of Holts’ flagship pubs, which was badly damaged by fire a couple of years ago and has been given an extensive and thoroughgoing refurbishment. It’s not bad at all – although done in a generally “contemporary” style, it retains a vault and the lounge still has a fair amount of traditional pub-style bench seating.

But I was taken aback to be charged £2.23 for a pint of Holts Bitter – a full fifteen pence more than Original Bitter in my local Hydes pub. Make no mistake, the beer was good, the pub is smart and comfortable, and I don’t begrudge paying that. But it’s a far cry from the days twenty years ago when Holts were champions of the good value pint. Even in the Griffin in Heaton Mersey it’s still somewhere in the £1.70s.

At about ten past two on a Saturday afternoon there was a notable dearth of customers in the vault – you do have to wonder whether Holts have thrown the baby out with the bathwater in trying to take their pubs upmarket.

The woman who waters the workers’ beer

Here’s a picture of Sally Keeble MP, who has sponsored the Private Members’ Bill calling for the introduction of minimum drink pricing. As I am not The Devil’s Kitchen, I will go no further than to call her a miserable cow.

But it struck me that this is a profoundly snobbish measure – the middle classes will still be able to jug themselves to oblivion on craft-brewed ales, chateau-bottled wines and single malt whiskies, but the poor will have to pay more for cheap crap, which is often all they can afford. It will, in practice, inflate the household bills of poor families while leaving the better-off completely unscathed. In short, it is a highly regressive measure – but of course, as we have seen with tobacco duty, self-proclaimed socialists have never been afraid to screw the poor financially.

Also, despite its declared intentions, surely minimum pricing will end up placing more emphasis on alcoholic strength, not less, as at the lower end of the drinks market there will be a much more direct association between price and strength. If it commands a price premium, stronger will be perceived as better to a much greater degree than at present.

I’ll drink tae that

Excellent news from Scotland that the SNP’s ill-considered plan to raise the minimum age for buying alcohol in the off-trade from 18 to 21 have been decisively defeated by 72 votes to 47 in the Scottish Parliament.

Of course the killer point against this is the one made by Tory deputy leader Murdo Fraser: “They are creating an even more ludicrous situation whereby a soldier returning from a tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan at the age of 20 cannot buy a bottle of champagne from the off-licence to celebrate with his wife on his return.” A point also made in my Opening Times column for October.

And of course the proposal does not sit at all well with the SNP’s declared intention to reduce the voting age in Scotland to 16.

It’s also worth having a look at the very responsible and well-argued website produced by CARDAS, the mainly student-led Coalition Against Raising the Drinking Age in Scotland.

The minimum Trojan horse

Although in my view it’s a bad idea for numerous reasons, many supporters of pubs have been attracted to the idea of minimum pricing of alcohol as a means of curbing some of the discounting excesses in the off-trade. But what is being proposed in a Private Members’ Bill put forward by Sally Keeble MP goes far beyond a simple flat-rate minimum price per unit.

The private members’ bill calls for the setting up of a Drinks Industry Council (DIC), made up of representatives from the industry, producers, police, health care, youth sector and consumers, which would advise Government on a minimum price for a unit of alcohol, promotions and set codes of conduct.

The minimum price would be set by the Government after advice from the DIC with different prices being set depending on product, alcoholic strength, region and the type of establishment selling it. The minimum price would be reviewed every year.

The Bill also calls for limits on alcohol advertising by supermarkets and the areas in which alcohol can be displayed and the introduction of a standard warning label for all drinks.

In other words, the creation of a whole new structure of bureaucratic control to regulate prices across all sectors and many other aspects of the drinks trade. In reality, with the vast burden of regulation they suffer already, the trade need that like a hole in the head. And, with “health” interests involved, you can be sure that there would be a steady year-on-year pressure to raise prices and cut back promotions.

And nobody has yet answered the question as to who benefits from the difference between the official minimum price and the market price.

A sigh of relief?

It's reported in the Sunday Times today that the government have backtracked on reported plans to reduce the drink-drive limit:

Ministers will also announce plans to toughen the regime for drink-driving, although they will reject calls from police and campaigners to reduce the drink-drive limit from 80mg of alcohol per 100mg of blood to 50mg.

Let's hope this proves to be true, as such a measure would lay waste to the remnants of the pub trade even more comprehensively than the smoking ban has done.

Skullsplitter threatened with axe

I see Orkney Brewery's Skullsplitter strong ale is the latest target of the politically correct brigade. This post by Mr Eugenides sums it up better than I ever could. It's also discussed here by The Pub Philosopher.

Is there any evidence that such beers actually do encourage alcohol-related violence or problem drinking? I don't think so. Indeed, the multi-beer free houses where they are likely to be encountered are some of the most notably problem-free of venues, although occasionally there may be a boisterous edge to the craic that would get the killjoys tut-tutting.

Only too true

I'm sure many struggling British pubs wondering when the promised post-ban influx of non-smokers was going to arrive could put up a sign very like this American one:

At your disservice

Spending a few days away recently unfortunately reacquainted me with the lamentable standard of service prevailing in restaurants in Britain. Now, I would have thought the job of a waiter wasn’t too difficult – you simply have to keep track of events on a handful of tables, and politely nudge them on to the next stage in the proceedings once it is obvious they are ready to order or have finished each course. But this is obviously far beyond the typical staff encountered nowadays, resulting in extended longeurs even when the place isn’t remotely busy.

Worst of all is actually managing to extract a bill from them. You’ve finished your dessert and coffee, and sit there for twenty minutes or more looking at your watch, drumming your fingers on the table and staring into space. No response whatsoever. So eventually you have to accost a member of the staff – invariably not the one who actually served you – and ask if you can have the bill now. They look at you as if you have just asked to molest their three-year-old daughter, stomp off and eventually produce it ten minutes later. Once you have gone through the rigmarole of presenting a credit card and getting it back it can all too easily be a full hour since the last drop of food or drink passed your lips, in which time you could have missed a train, a date or an interview. This has happened even in very busy restaurants where you might have thought freeing up a table would be a priority.

It may be regarded as down-market, but the typical pub practice of paying for your food at the time of ordering has much to be said for it if your time is limited.

No draught in here

A few years ago I commented on pubs keeping their doors open on chilly September evenings in a futile attempt to make people believe it was still summer. I came across some more of this the other week. Once the sun has gone down, the temperature can drop rapidly at this time of year, and bar staff working up a sweat behind the counter may not realise that customers are sitting in a freezing draught.

While this wasn’t house policy, I found myself in one otherwise good pub where customers were getting up to shut a non self-closing door every couple of minutes.

No sign of the inn

In one of the most ludicrous examples of anti-drink political correctness I have yet seen, Wiltshire County Council have joined forces with the Highways Agency to compel pubs to remove roadside direction signs, on the grounds that they may act as an incentive to drink-driving.

Do they really think that drivers on seeing one of these signs will pull off the main road, have a skinful at the Dog & Duck and then return to the highways to cause carnage? The idea that in practice they will act as any kind of incentive to drink-drive offending is simply incredible.

To be consistent, are they going to also demand the removal of signs pointing to any other establishment with an alcohol licence, such as hotels or restaurants, not to mention supermarkets? And what about pubs that are already situated by the roadside – will they have to remove all advertising material?

Nowadays, most country pubs derive a large part of their income from food – many having become to all intents and purposes restaurants. For the vast majority of drivers, these signs say one thing: “Here is somewhere to stop for food”, as is clearly shown by the photograph.

Especially worrying are the comments of Jacqui Ashman of the Highways Agency:

No alcohol is allowed to be served or consumed in service stations on motorways as a matter of principle and we would wish to continue this principle by not encouraging drivers to break their journey in a public house.

Why not? Even if you accept the argument that drivers should not consume any alcohol whatsoever, most pubs will offer a far wider range of soft drinks than motorway service areas, and will also provide a much more relaxing atmosphere. Service areas exist purely to serve road travellers, while pubs cater for a much wider and more diverse market. And service areas in many Continental countries serve alcohol with meals without the roads becoming a scene of mayhem.

And the point must be made that, even though the likes of Ms Ashman may want it to be different, drinking alcohol before driving is still permitted in this country so long as you do not exceed the prescribed legal limit.

Regrettably this is just another small, subtle way of undermining the trade of pubs and accelerating their decline.

Heading South

I’m a Northerner, and in many respects a strong defender of the North of England, but one thing I have little time for is the “traditional Northern head” on beer, which in reality is a tradition that goes back no more than two or three decades. Pulling beer through a tight sparkler and serving it with a thick collar of foam can all too easily knock the life out of it and blunt its flavour.

So I always enjoy a visit to the South of England, particularly the South-West, where beer is typically served with a notably shallower and thinner head. When it’s fresh and well-kept, this allows the flavour and character to shine through in a way they can never do with a Northern head, although it must be admitted that it also does nothing to disguise flat, tired beer.

Particular praise must go to the White Hart in Cheddar which on a recent visit served up a very tasty pint of Butcombe Bitter – one of my favourite beers – after a slow and trying journey through the roadworks over the Avonmouth Bridge.

Tramp juice

My previous post on the tendency to level down beer strengths led me to ponder on the morality of selling super-strength lagers such as Carlsberg Special Brew and Tennent’s Super at strengths of up to 9.0% ABV. Some groups have criticised these brews on the grounds that they are disproportionately favoured by people with severe alcohol problems, hence the nickname of “tramp juice”.

Their producers would argue, of course, that there are plenty of other alcoholic drinks available at similar or higher strengths, including ciders and wines in non-resealable containers, and that market research shows the majority of consumers of these products are not problem drinkers. A quick look around off-licence shelves also showed that in terms of price per unit they were at a similar level to other beers and lagers, so they aren’t a particularly cheap way of getting drunk.

Beer differs from other drinks in that it is available in a wide variety of strengths, whereas wine and spirits tend to be sold at a common strength, or at least over a very narrow range of strengths. I argued below that there were many beers whose strength was an integral part of their character, and so any attempt to set a mandatory ceiling on beer strength would be unreasonable.

However, strong beers should be savoured for their rich flavour and character, not guzzled as a rapid path to inebriation. Selling these beers in 440 ml or 500 ml cans does rather suggest that the latter is the prime objective. So, at a time when a spotlight is being directed at the social responsibility of the drinks industry, it might well make sense for their producers to switch to selling them in 330 ml cans, and also to downplay their alcoholic strength in marketing and pack design.

And might a strong lager actually be more palatable at around 6.5-7% ABV rather than 9% when the taste is largely overwhelmed by alcohol? It is widely considered that the 7.2% Carlsberg Elephant Beer is a far superior brew to the 9.0% Special Brew.

Levelling down?

InBev, the makers of Stella Artois, have recently announced that they are going to “harmonise” the strength of the premium lager at 5.0% ABV, as opposed to the previous 5.2%. While that isn’t the most earth-shattering news, it does seem to indicate a growing reluctance of brewers to offer mainstream products above 5.0%. Holsten Pils used to be sold at 5.5% with the slogan “more of the sugar turns to alcohol”, but that’s now a flat 5% too. A number of mass-market ciders have also had their strength reduced, as has the draught version of Old Speckled Hen.

Now I would certainly never advocate drinking anything purely on the basis of its strength, or assessing alcoholic drinks on a “bangs per buck” basis. But there are many beers - such as Robinson’s Old Tom and Belgian specialities such as Duvel - whose strength is an integral part of their character. It is not unreasonable that drinkers might sometimes want to sacrifice quantity for strength and choose a beer that is rich and warming rather than one that is light and refreshing. And if you want to pay a bit more for a 5.5% lager rather than a 5% one, why shouldn’t you?

But I do get the feeling that brewers are deliberately aiming to limit the strength of their mainstream products in an attempt to avoid an anti-alcohol backlash. This is something that needs to be watched carefully as within a few years it might be extremely difficult to buy any beers stronger than 5% apart from expensive specialities.

The mark of Cain Part 2

It seems from various reports that, while the Cains brewing and pub business has gone into administration, the Dusanj brothers still own the freehold of the brewery and some of the pubs, and may be contemplating buying some of the other pubs back off the receiver. Now if that isn’t sharp business practice I don’t know what is – no wonder the IFBB wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole.

Trade ‘substantially down’

It becomes a bit tedious endlessly repeating bad news, but here’s yet another report confirming the sharp downturn in the pub trade over the past year or so. 25% of pubs report a big drop in profitability, rising to 33% amongst wet-led community locals.

Mid-strength misleads

I’ve seen a couple of drinks products recently described as “mid-strength”, such as this new version of Magners. Now, I would have thought “mid-strength” was somewhere between the strength of ordinary cooking beers and strong premium ones, say around 4.5% ABV. But in fact these products are only half the strength of normal drinks, and are if anything mid-way to zero alcohol. Surely they should be described as “lower alcohol” or even, being honest, “piss-weak”, rather than the misleading “mid-strength”. Presumably the thinking is that they don’t want to deter men who wouldn’t be seen dead drinking anything “weak” – but are consumers really that gullible?

A day to bury bad news

This is a pretty coruscating attack on the rationale behind plans to reduce the drink-drive limit in the UK. (Warning: swearing alert!)

Why should we adopt the laws of countries that, despite a nominally lower legal threshold, still in practice have more drink-related road deaths?

In particular, this comment from a coroner stands out:

“Of those fatal accidents where alcohol is implicated, it has been on very rare occasions, and I have been doing this job for 17 years, that I have come across inquests where people have been killed with a blood alcohol level of between 50 and 80mgs. Normally, the blood alcohol level involved in these deaths is between 150 and 350 mgs.”

This underlines the point that the vast majority of accidents attributed to alcohol involve people who are by any standards drunk, not those marginally above or even below the current legal limit.

Stand up and be counted

I see the licensee of the Prince of Orange in Ashton-under-Lyne has banned his local MP from the pub on the grounds that he supported the smoking ban, which has led to a 50% fall in custom. It would be a good thing if more licensees were prepared to make their voices heard in this way. If an MP found him or herself barred from over half the pubs in their constituency, it might just make them think a little.

Pubs should also consider putting up posters stating that, while they do not tolerate breaking the law, they do not support the ban. And why not adapt the mandatory no smoking signs to make it clear it is a government diktat rather than house policy?

Bringing it all back home

One of the major trends in the drinks market over the past thirty years has been the move from drinking in the pub to drinking at home. Surely one of the major reasons behind this, although rarely acknowledged, is the rise in car ownership. Beer is a very heavy substance, and so if you don’t have a car it is hard work to lug enough of it home for a decent drinking session. Even in the mid-1970s, most ordinary working-class families didn’t have a car, but now (assuming they are actually in work and not living on benefits) they do, so it becomes much easier to stock up on beer at home. And, as the market grows, obviously retailers will start tailoring offers to cater for it. There’s not much point in offering multibuy deals on 15-packs if the customers have to carry them home on the bus.

Hatred breeds hatred

In a recent incident in Kent, a woman suffered a broken wrist from being pushed on to a railway track after she had complained about two men smoking on a station platform. Clearly any attack such as this must be condemned unreservedly. However, it must be pointed out that until very recently, what the two men were doing would have been entirely legal. Although there is no legal requirement for them to do so, as platforms are open spaces, railway companies have taken it upon themselves to ban smoking there in the contemporary spirit of political correctness.

It may be an unpalatable truth to some, but if there hadn’t been a witchhunt against smokers and smoking, this incident would never have happened. It is a direct result of our current climate of bigotry and intolerance. And in any situation people need to think very carefully before acting as self-appointed policemen.

Measures of confusion

A Polish-themed bar and restaurant in Doncaster is reported to be facing prosecution from Trading Standards for serving draught beer in metric measures of 0.5 and 0.3 litres. Predictably, this has led to a chorus from the metrication lobby about “freedom of choice” - but you do have to wonder whether they would be quite so vocal if a traditional Scottish-themed pub was serving whisky in measures of a quarter of a gill. In reality, of course, they couldn’t care less about freedom of choice - they are championing it as a way of eroding one of the few traditional measures we are still allowed to use.

The key issue here, of course, is not really one of metric vs Imperial but of pubs being required to use the measures prescribed by weights and measures legislation. If there was a free-for-all in draught beer measures it would lead to endless confusion for the customer. Some pubs would switch to serving beer in half-litre measures, but would not reduce the price accordingly, while no doubt others would try to encourage customers by saying “10% bigger pints here”. It’s also important that customers should left in no doubt as to how much they are drinking.