A Pub For All Seasons by Adrian Tierney-Jones: It’s not a pub crawl, it’s RESEARCH

A Pub For All Seasons by Adrian Tierney-Jones Headline £20, 304pp

I love pubs. I mean, I like beer and I am very fond of red wine. But I LOVE pubs, and there aren’t many times when I walk past a warm and welcoming boozer and don’t want to wander in, even it’s for just a quick one.

Not that it often turns out to be ‘just a quick one’, but you know what I mean.

Adrian Tierney-Jones, it is safe to say, loves pubs too. 

He has spent most of the past 40 years writing about them, and he was Beer Writer of the Year in 2017, which sounds like a cake-and-eat-it kind of thing: you sit in a pub, you write about it, someone gives you a prize. Finally I have something to aspire to in my declining years, other than an open-ended hangover.

His latest book is subtitled ‘A Yearlong Journey In Search Of The Perfect British Local’ but it’s clear from what lies within been going on for much longer than 12 months.

In my experience, you find the perfect pub, and then you look for another one, and another, until you have got the set. It’s obviously a doomed quest, and pubs that are good in summer may not be up to much in the depths of winter, and vice versa.

But it’s the journey that counts, not the destination.

Tierney-Jones has a predilection for what used to be called old men’s pubs, which oddly enough I share, having been an apprentice for these old geezers in my youth and now approaching the age of the old geezers who are left. 

He likes warm, dark-wooded boozers with chatty staff and regulars who have an opinion or two that they are keen to share, but he gives more leeway to the legions of pub bores out there than I would. 

Drink up: People from every walk of life can find a haven in a local pub

At times he can overwrite, but most of the time he’s spot on. ‘On this dark, cold winter’s night I found a haven and a harbour, somewhere I could rest my soul and drink deeply of a pint of milk stout – a creamy, smooth and soothing beer that I lapped up with the enthusiasm of a cat when presented with a delicate saucer of warm milk.’

He travels around the country in all weathers, mainly visiting these establishments in the afternoon, which is almost always the best time to visit a pub. He has a clear bias towards the country pub and against the city pubs I tend to frequent, and London pubs are conspicuous by their absence.

But then the pubs I know in Dorset and in Hastings aren’t here either. I don’t take offence; I am just happy that should I ever find myself in Totnes (the Barrel House) or Sheffield (the Sheffield Tap), I shall now know where to go.

Beer writers can be a judgmental breed. They sneer at lagers and prefer evil bitters that taste of old fishermen’s socks. But Tierney-Jones is better than this. 

This is a splendid book, ruminative, thoughtful and as full of good cheer as the best pub.