DYMOCK-based folklore expert Roy Palmer has published a new book for beer lovers called A Taste of Ale, which is a celebration of prose, anecdotes, song and verse about Britain's tippling heritage.

Mr Palmer, a member of the John Masefield Society and the Friends of the Dymock Poets, uses his extensive literary knowledge to take the fireside reader on a mental ramble, around the brews and bars of the country.

Masefield, of course, is quoted here and there, and the poem The Land Workers in particular calls to mind a bygone hop picking culture that must have been rooted in the Ledbury region, Masefield's own.

But this is not a volume about Ledbury, or indeed the three counties. Rather its many references, from Shakespeare to newspaper headlines of the present age, create a haven for the imagination, a hope that despite the closure of many rural pubs this century, there will always be a bar, if not an England, and a pint of beer to wash down the troubles of life.

Dickens, of course, expresses this world best of all, with his view that "all bars are snug places".

For Doctor Johnson, "there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good tavern or inn".

For those who agree, Mr Palmer's book is well researched, well illustrated, and well constructed.

It is published by the Green Branch Press, at £6.95 a copy, and would make fine reading at Christmas.