DEAR EDITOR -- I was both distressed and amused to note the new name, Epic Bar Brasserie, for the former Ewe and Lamb pub near the town of Bromsgrove.

Distressed because an historic name rooted in the neighbourhood since the nineteenth century has been insensitively tossed aside for, one presumes, some corporate rebranding exercise in the best tradition of McDonalds? And amused because brasserie in my language means brewery, but the Epic Bar Brasserie is clearly not a brewery!

Idiomatically, brasserie can also mean bar. So we could equally say The Epic Bar Bar!

Is this a cryptic connection with the lamb in the original name? I think not. Just a further thoughtless erosion of the public house tradition the rest of the world used to envy and try to copy.

Maurice Bechoux, c/o Meadowfield Road, Rubery