When I was scouring the Continent with Charles Fontaine for brewery transport stories and pictures for our book we came across a marvellous stone statue of a 1920s lorry carrying barrels at Anchor Brewery in Schiltigheim in Northern France. The carved vehicle was finely detailed and resembled a Willème of the type created from wartime Liberty chassis.
I hadn’t appreciated how popular British beer had once been on the Continent and had assumed that all our exports had been of IPA to hot colonies. I suppose that an early indication of its spread was given in Edouard Manet’s well-known 1882 painting of the bar at the Folies Bergères that depicts two bottles of Bass on the counter. In honour
