Session #150: Martyn Cornell – Porter And Stout

It is difficult to write about Martyn Cornell’s last book, Porter and Stout: A Complete History without being caught up by the sad fact of his passing a little over a year ago now. As many had written after the news of his passing circulated, he seemed always able to be available at the other end of an email or a chain of comments at a blog, an encouraging and cranky mentor as well as loyal and frankly honest friend to anyone who took writing about beer seriously. Even when, as certainly was often the case with me, he had no idea what I was going on about. He is missed. But this is The Session – or rather The Session – and that offers the helpful constraint of the question that has, in this case, been posed by Boak and Bailey: Your post just needs to be in some way a response to it, or to Martyn’s previous work on the subject of porter and stout. If you can read some of the book, though, even if it’s just a few pages or a chapter on some aspect of the history of porter and stout that…