The Beerage

This is a photograph from forty years ago of the statue to Michael Arthur Bass, First Baron Burton. It stood - indeed if Google StreetView is to be believed, it still stands - in front of Burton Town Hall, where the bronze baron supervises the car park. I took the photograph to illustrate a book on the lives of the great brewers, I was working on at the time (which like most of my books never progressed much further than a few scribbled notes on the back of a damp beer mat). Michael Arthur Bass - the great grandson of William Bass the founder of the brewery - was a prime example of members of the great brewing families that were elevated to the House of Lords, and collectively were known as "The Beerage".