A few days ago the English beer writer and historian Martyn Cornell passed away. This came as an unwelcome shock to many folk in the beer world, myself included. I should add that I’m not part of the inner circle of beer writers that Martyn was part of, nor had I ever met him, but he and I had exchanged a few pieces of correspondence over the years. In my minor dealings with Martyn I found him to be an honest, sincere and knowledgeable man.
I wanted to formally mark Martyn’s passing on DBB for three reasons;
Firstly, as the almost simultaneous passing of Oscar Wong, and the (relatively) recent passing of Ron Jeffries and others has shown, I am reminded that there is a certain age and a certain maturity amongst several people in the beer scene these days. 30 and 40-something guys from 20-25 years ago are now, well, … 20-25 years older! I’m sad to say … well … enough said perhaps.
Secondly, a few months ago an old post of Martyn’s from 2013 inspired me to write this post. From a personal, reflective point of view, my post is probably one of the more important ones that I’ve contemplated in a couple of decades of writing down my beer related thoughts.
Finally, Martyn and I always saw eye to eye on session beer which made me so very, very happy. I’ll never forget this that he wrote as a reply on a blog/forum back in 2012. RIP Martyn.
