Tag: events

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Why don’t you switch off your smartphone and go out and do something less boring instead?

… such as coming to one of my summer festival events?

This weekend it’s the Stoke Newington Literary Festival. Set up by my wife Liz in 2010, it’s now become recognised as one of the coolest small festivals in the UK, thanks to a combination of it being a nice place with some lovely venues to sit and listen and talk about books, having an excellent audience, amazing volunteers, and Liz’s boundless enthusiasm and extraordinary knack for programming events. Even if I had nothing to do with it you should still come if you can, for legendary novelists, celebrations of Punk’s 40th birthday, a little bit of politics, some food, drink and superb comedy.

But I also happen to be doing a couple of events too.

Amended from the original after I first posted it. Thanks, Tom Stainer!

On Saturday at 6pm I’ll be welcoming four of London’s best breweries to chat beer in Stoke Newington Town Hall. Is London’s brewery boom showing the first signs of slowing down? Are we getting bored of Citra hops yet? Is our love affair with craft beer turning sour? Or are we set for an ever-expanding beery universe after London brewing’s 2010 Big Bang? Such questions can only be answered with a beer in hand, so Redemption (who have sponsored Stokey Litfest since its inception) London Brewing Co (who are helping us run the festival bars this year) 40FT (who are possibly the closest brewery now the Stoke Newington) and Brewed by Numbers (who are currently making my favourite London beers) will each be bringing one of their beers along for you to taste while they share their thoughts. We did a similar event at Stokey Litfest three years ago. It sold out, and people are still talking about it. Tickets for London’s Brewing are £5 and available here, and include four beer samples. It’s the best deal you’ll get on London craft beer anywhere this weekend.

The festival bars will feature loads of great beers and ciders, and not o be missed is the marquee outside the town hall, sponsored by our lead beer partner Budvar. The Czech brewery will be bringing their new krausened beer as well as the original Budvar, and the tent will feature performances by bands, poets and musicians across the weekend including the phenomenal Andy Diagram (ex-James) doing things with a trumpet that will blow your mind – here he was at the festival two years ago:

and the legendary Edward Tudor Pole out of Crystal Maze and Tenpole Tudor (suit of armour probably not included this time).

If I can tear myself away from that, I’m doing a second event on Sunday. My friend and fellow N16 author Travis Elborough has written a fine book about the role of parks in shaping, enhancing and defining our communities, and we thought pubs – the other great people’s institution – had a lot in common with that, and I have a new book on pubs coming out in the summer. The affable and engaging Mark Mason’s new book looks at Britain by postcode, and how they shape the way we think of an area. The three of us had a chat on stage at the festival three years ago and everyone wanted it to carry on in the beer tent afterwards, so we’re all back with our new books this year to pick up where we left off. According to the official programme, we’re Stokey’s literary boy band. Terrifying. Tickets for Pubs, Parks and Postcodes are £4 and are available here.

Later in June, I’m ridiculously excited to be making my gigging venue at the Glastonbury Festival. At 3pm on the Friday, I’ll be talking apples and tors, orchards and Celtic myth, and about how ridiculously excited I am to get to see Phillip Glass’s Heroes Symphony live. If you’re lucky enough to have got s ticket to Glasto this year, try to find me at the Free University of Glastonbury Stage.

A couple of days after that I’m getting on a plane to South Africa! Beer Boot Camp is a one day conference with a difference – it goes on tour! I’ll be chatting beer ingredients and my forthcoming book to brewers and beer enthusiasts in Jo’burg in the 2nd and Cape Town on the 9th. More information and tickets here.

And finally for now, I’ll be at the Green Man Festival from 18th to 21st August. My beer and music matching at Green Man has turned into a regular gig and one of my favourite events of the year. With 100 beers and ciders in the beer tent and a wonderfully eclectic line-up across the stages, I’ll be kicking off Green Man 2016 at noon on Friday by pairing the beers and performers of the festival. we had over a thousand people packed into the literary tent last year for this so if you are going to Green Man, get there early to get a seat!

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“Events, dear boy, events!” (As Harold Macmillan probably didn’t say)

Early
autumn is busy at the best of times and I have a book coming out in October.
Here’s what’s keeping me on the road and off the streets for the next couple
months.
FRIDAY
23RD AUGUST: APG PLANNING RAMBLE IN SOUTHWARK
This one goes out to all the ad industry planners doing the job I used to do. I’m leading a meander of planners around Southwark tomorrow lunchtime, discussing Shakespeare’s Local and ending up in The George. Contact Sarah Newman at the APG to book a place if you’re interested.
SATURDAY
24TH AUGUST: HOPS AND GLORY AT THE HOPS AND GLORY!
4PM
I feel a bit bad that a pub named after George Orwell – one of the greatest ever English writers – was changed to the name of one of my books. But not too bad. The Hops & Glory is an excellent pub at the top of Essex Road in Islington. This Bank Holiday Weekend it’s having an IPA festival, and they invited me down to do a talk on the history of possible the greatest ever beer style. I’ll be talking, reading from Hops & Glory, signing books and tasting beers.
(After my talk, I’ll be checking out two other excellent Bank Holiday events in pubs that are walking distance from the Hops & Glory, purely as punter: a weekend-long cider festival at The Alma on Newington Green, and a celebration of East London Breweries at the Duke of Wellington on Balls Pond Road.)
THURSDAY 29TH AUGUST: THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN THROUGH BEER, WITH MEANTIME BREWERY
Meantime’s Old Brewery hosts a monthly beer dinner where you get to taste a stunning array of beers bound together by a loose theme. I was delighted to be asked back to do a new one after a successful IPA dinner at the end of last year. The theme for this one is the role of beer throughout British history, and a look at the different forces that have shaped the development of beer, and the way beer has in turn influenced the development of society. The beers on the menu are a symbolic, rather than literal, representation of key styles over time, starting from the present day and moving back in time. Here’s the menu in full:
A History of Britain According to Beer
The Old Brewery Beer and Food Night Menu
  
Introduction
Meantime London Pilsner
Timothy Taylor Landlord
Starter
Smoked eel, carrot and beetroot salad, horseradish
cream
Hobson’s Mild
Main
Beef Wellington, Welsh potato cakes, ale gravy
Redchurch Great Eastern IPA
Dessert
Apple pie with custard & vanilla ice cream
Meantime London Porter
Cheese
A selection of British cheese with beer chutney &
crackers
St Bernardus Pater C
  
To finish
Kernel Export Stout
Full details and ticket booking are available at the Meantime Old Brewery website.
SATURDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER:
WORLD’S BEST CIDER AT ABERGAVENNY FOOD FESTIVAL
The ‘Glastonbury of Food Festivals’ (copyright: the entire foodie media) has become a bit of a regular fixture for me and every year it’s so good I decide that I’m emigrating to Wales before subsequently sobering up. This year Bill Bradshaw and I will be talking about World’s Best Cider and sampling a few different ciders from around the world. 
Tickets for this event have already sold out! Returns may be available. But the next day, Bill will be interviewing one of my favourite cider makers – Simon Day from Once Upon A Tree. Simon’s ciders are quite unlike anything you might imagine, recalling the seventeenth century tradition of Herefordshire fine cyder. I’ll be in the front row holding my glass up. Tickets are available here.

THURSDAY 17TH OCTOBER:
WORLD’S BEST CIDER LAUNCH!
The book hits the shelves! We’ll be doing various events around the country. Details will go up here when confirmed. 

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Beer and Booze at Stoke Newington Literary Festival 2013

When I’m busy writing a book my wife goes beyond the call of duty by looking after me, talking me down when I’m stressed, bringing me regular cups of tea and feeding me, telling me I’m a good writer when I am, and telling me I’ve written something awful on the far more frequent occasions when I’ve done that instead.

She’s brilliant.

And then, for the last four years, every May/June she effectively goes, “Right, now it’s my turn.”

The first full weekend in June is the Stoke Newington Literary Festival, widely hailed now as one of the best small scale book/reading festivals in the UK. This is her brainchild, and she organises it entirely voluntarily, for no fee and (so far) with no funding. A team of volunteers work their butts off to make it happen and it gets better every year, to the point where last year it looked to the outside world like it was professionally run.

I help out, doing the marketing and overseeing the festival bars. So if you’re anywhere around London between 3rd and 9th June, there’s no better place to come and do a bit of beer and brainfood matching.

The full programme is available to download here, and the main festival website with up to the minute details is at www.stokenewingtonliteraryfestival.com.

This year we’ve got our best line-up yet. Headliners include Irvine Welsh being interviewed by John Niven (almost sold out), Thurston Moore and friends playing an intimate local gig (sold out), Turkey’s most successful female author Elif Shafak, bookish comedians John Hegley and Robin Ince, Danny Baker chatting to Danny Kelly, Caitlin Moran talking to Suzanne Moore (sold out) and lots of politics, sci-fi, hot new fiction, music – and food and drink.

But never mind all that – on Friday 7th I’m going to be interviewing the fabulous Cleo Rocos!

The legendary Kenny Everett Show muse is now President of the Tequila Society, has her own tequila brand Aqua Riva, and has written a book called The Power of Positive Drinking. OK so she hardly mentions beer in it. But she does talk about the virtues of many other drinks, and will be telling stories about taking Princes Diana out drinking with Freddie Mercury, so that’s good enough for me.

On Saturday 8th I’m hosting various London brewers and beer writer Will Hawkes at an event called London’s Brewing, which you may be surprised to hear is an overview of the craft beer explosion in the capital over the last three or four years.

Will is the author of Craft Beer London, and we’ll be joined onstage by brewers from Sambrooks, Five Points, Beavertown and Pressure Drop, who will be bringing along their beers for everyone to taste while we muse over how brilliant London’s brewing scene is just now, and where it might go next.

Later that night, I’ll be happy to be a few drinks to the good as I rather trepidatiously become a contestant in Literary Death Match.

This irreverently bookish evening originated in the US, where it is now being made into a TV pilot, and has now gone global. It’s gaining an increasing reputation over here as a refreshing antidote for anyone who’s ever been bored of hearing an author droning on about form their book. Four authors compete for the love and affection of the audience and the judges, who score them on content, delivery, and ‘intangibles’. The two heat winners then go head to head in a a final that’s basically whatever the hosts can think of to stop the authors talking and make them look a little foolish.

If I survive that, I’ll be joining two excellent writers onstage on Sunday 9th to discuss London by Bridge, Tube and Pub.

At the same time as I was writing Shakespeare’s Local (which is released in paperback on 6th June) a neighbouring author, Travis Elborough, was crafting a book about the famous yarn of London Bridge being bought by an American millionaire and shipped to the States.

Often misunderstood and misquoted, the truth is often stranger than any exaggeration. Meanwhile, Mark Mason decided it would be a good idea to visit every station on the London Underground, not by taking the tube between them, but by tracing the lines above ground. 

It gave him a unique psychogeography of the city, and the three of us will be chatting to each other about the different ways London reveals itself, and competing to be the first to use words such as ‘psychogeography’.

When I’m not onstage I’ll probably be helping to run the bars. Every year a range of brewers and drinks makers kindly donate stock that we then sell. With no other arts or commercial funding of any description, this makes the festival financially viable and allows us to keep ticket prices lower than most other literary festivals.

One of our most enduring sponsors has been Budweiser Budvar, and for the first time this year they are sponsoring a marquee just outside Stoke Newington Town Hall, which will be the festival hub and home to various speakers, comedians and musicians throughout the main festival weekend. Budvar will also be available in the bars in our three main venues: the Town Hall itself, the Library Gallery, and Abney Hall.

It will be joined by a special festival beer from Tottenham’s Redemption Brewery, thanks to Andy Moffat, the nicest man in the world, as well as great ciders from Aspall, more beer (and award-wining English fizz) from Chapel Down and Curious Brew, and a smattering of Brew Dog beers. And some other wine and stuff.

We’ve found over the last few years that great writing is best appreciated and new ideas best communicated with a drink in hand. The festival ups the ante on all fronts this year – see you there.

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Shameless Self-Promotion

Shameless plugging: it’s a good thing.  It’s the first reason I started this blog, on my editor’s advice.  Little did he know what he was setting in motion, but let’s get back to basics with a run-through of some events I’m doing over the next few weeks.  If the idea of meeting me face to face repulses you, look away now.
This weekend, Ed Davies, ambitious young manager of Kilverts in Hay-on-Wye, is staging his second annual Beer and Literature Festival.  Me, Young Dredge and Adrian Tierney-Jones are the beer writers in residence.  Tomorrow night I’m doing a beer and food pairing dinner, nicking from John Keeling at Fullers the idea of pairing each course with two contrasting beers to help people explore what matches best.  It ended up being Wales vs rest of the world with each course. I’m expecting the Welsh beers will fare better than the football team (after all, you can’t finish 117th if there are only handful of countries being featured). Then on Saturday I’m doing my Beer and Book Matching talk, with one or two tweaks from last time.  Orwell, Amis, Hamilton, Dickens, Burton ale, lager, porter – but who goes with what?  Adrian and Mark will be doing a second beer and food matching dinner on Saturday night, and there are all sorts of other goodies going on, with an impressive array of beers on keg and cask.
Then me and Mr Bill Bradshaw board a plane for the US – we’re being looked after by the utterly fabulous North American cider community with what promises to be a thrilling and unforgettable tour of craft cider.  As a tiny thank you we offered to do our cider talk (which went down very well in Wales) at the Great Lakes Cider and Perry Festival in St Johns, Michigan on 10th and 11th September.  As you might guess, we’re quite looking forward to that one.  Not sure which day we’re on or what time but think the event is on course to sell out, so if you are in the unlikely position of being a reader of this blog who is based near the Great Lakes and enjoys cider, get your ticket quick!
Back in the UK, 17th-18th September it’s the Abergavenny Food Festival, which is now firmly established as one of the top food festival in the country, with as many celebrity chefs and chutney stalls as you could ever need.  I’m going to be busier than ever this year, with a beer and food matching dinner on the nights of the 16th at the Bell Inn in nearby Glangrwyney, a joint event with Nick Otley on the 17th, where we’ll be using Otley beers to showcase a world of beer styles, and a talk on Sunday where me, Ian Marchant and Paul Ewen discuss the enduring appeal of the British pub.  I’m excited about all these events, especially the last one – Ian wrote the excellent The Longest Crawl – a book I would have written myself if he hadn’t done it first – and Paul is the one-man ‘Campaign for Surreal Ale’, thanks to his hilariously disturbing book of London Pub Reviews.  Three of us in a room together promises to be interesting.  I can’t link to the events individually but tickets for all of them are available on the festival website.  
The following week is Social Media Week, with events happening in various cities around the world linking up in real time.  The hub of it all this year is Glasgow, and you know who’s in Glasgow? WEST brewery, that’s who, the finest and possibly only Germano-Scottish brewery on the planet.  On 22nd September from 6-8pm GMT I’ll be joining them for a global real time tutored beer tasting, featuring beers from various participating cities including Vancouver, Chicago and Milan.  More details as we work them out.
I go straight from Glasgow down to Cockermouth, for the Taste Cumbria Food Festival.  Me and Jeff Pickthall will be doing beer and food matching masterclasses and beer trials on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th, somewhere around Cockermouth. 
The week after that, after launching the 2011-2012 Cask Report on Monday 26th September I’m off to the Great American Beer Festival. No events planned for there, but I’m open to offers!  Really looking forward to meeting North American friends and readers, many of whom I’ve become friends with online but have not yet met in person.
When I finally get back to London I’m running a pub quiz at the excellent Snooty Fox in Canonbury on the evening of 6th October.  The owners say one of the Pippettes works behind the bar there – it’ll be the first time I have ever been start struck by a barmaid.

The next day we’re down to Lewes for their Octoberfeast shindig.  The Snowdrop Inn is one of the most exquisite pubs I’ve ever been to, and last year they hosted me for a Hops & Glory reading that was one of the highlights of my year.  I’m doing Beer and Book Matching down there this time, on 7th October, and staying overnight so I can find out what Melissa Cole‘s Scotch Egg event is all about the following afternoon…

And finally (for now) I go straight from there up to the Manchester Food & Drink Festival to host another beer and food dinner on October 9th.  I shall be stalking Elbow.  
When I finish all that, I have to hibernate to write three books.  I probably shan’t be surfacing till the New Year.  At which point I might have a day or two off.  Hope to see you at an event!

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