London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
My first book, The CAMRA Guide to London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars, is officially published on Monday (4 July) and copies are already being sent out. However such is the nature of these things that it’s already slightly out of date. Guidebooks are notorious for this, but in this case the problem is intensified, rather happily, by the continuing dynamism of the market, with new beer specialists opening and established outlets expanding their range. Indeed the beer scene in London is flourishing in a way that hasn’t been seen since at least the 1970s revival of interest in real ale.
The obvious solution is to keep it up to date through this website and that’s exactly what I’ve already been doing, both with blog entries and with a PDF supplement which I intend to publish periodically. The first supplement is already out and is available here.
As the final text went to the publisher, I already had a list of places to drink that perhaps should have been considered but weren‘t, and this has continued to grow. This update catches up among other things on a number of Nicholson‘s pubs I missed, and starts to provide better coverage of the Antic pubco‘s estate.
Several new developments are also marked here including, most significantly, the just opened Craft Beer Co. Then there’s the Dean Swift’s sister pub the Old Red Cow a restored range under new ownership at the Duke of Hamilton and upmarket burger chain Byron‘s espousal of craft beer.
The list of possible additions is by no means exhausted and I know of several further openings planned, not to mention new breweries, so there will be plenty of material for future updates. I’m also hoping readers will keep me up to date with comments, corrections and suggestions: see under About above for link.
Enjoy!
When is the updated reprint planned?
Do you mean a reprint of the book itself? That is largely down to the publisher. It was only published on 4 July so no plans I know of yet. First it’s likely there will be a reprint, which only gives us the opportunity to correct a few typos and other issues as far as I know. Then hopefully there will be a new edition at some point — but not guaranteed and probably not for a couple of years. In the meantime please refer to the latest updates on this page including the PDFs. I’m putting individual updates online as and when I get a chance, and hope to refresh the PDF every three months or so.