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Beer history

Artyfacts from the Nyneties #3: Editors at War

This really is the footnote to end all footnotes but it interested us because it answered some lingering from this long post about women in the world of British beer.

Back in 2013, we emailed Andrea Gillies, who edited two editions of the Campaign for Real Ale’s Good Beer Guide in the early 1990s, but she wasn’t especially keen to talk about her time at CAMRA. Now we think we know why.

After a period of apparently reasonably friendly relations with her former employer during which she wrote a challenging guest column about bottled beer (WB, November 1993), in December 1993, this happened:

Gillies raps 'blokish' GBG -- story from What's Brewing, December 1993.
From What’s Brewing, December 1993. (Click to enlarge.)

Though Mr Evans’s response was fairly diplomatic it’s hard not to suspect that some persistent resentment in St Albans influenced this review of Ms Gillies’ own book released in 1995:

'How Andrea Got "Canned"', book review from What's Brewing.
From What’s Brewing, October 1995. (Click to enlarge.)

We weren’t there, and we don’t know the people involved, so it wouldn’t be right for us to pick sides. It was pretty forward-thinking of CAMRA to appoint Ms Gillies in 1988, though, and it’s a shame it all got so nasty.