Clayton writes that his drinking career began, as many do, by nicking some of grandad’s Guinness when he was four years old. Almost 60 years later, the pub – along with his other great passion of music – has shaped his life. This memoir is joyous, hilarious and life-affirming, nostalgic and sad, and vital and optimistic. It’s rooted in West Yorkshire and evokes the role of the pub in declining mining communities as successfully as any academic social history, but draws on commonalities that everyone will recognise, wherever their local happens to be.
