Sherlock Holmes and Beer

Sherlock Holmes didn’t much go for beer. I read today, in one of the millions of footnotes in William S Baring Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes, that in all of the 56 short stories and four novels, he drinks beer only a handful of times. On two occasions, it’s half-and-half, which he drinks when disguised as a working man.

But that didn’t stop him posing for this advertisement for Mann’s Brown Ale in the 1950s (click for bigger version).

Although, to be fair, it’s Watson who’s the boozer in this case.

Picture taken from Peter Haining’s Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook.