Ep22 — On Writing and St. Mars of the Desert

It often dawns on me that, as cool as my job of being a writer is, it’s also pretty-fucking-weird. This never felt more the case than over the past nine months where I worked on not one, but two very different books. Not only is having a self-defined career writing (predominantly) about beer, cider and wine strange, but it’s also quite a lonely experience, and largely revolves around working solo. This has felt especially true over the past 18 months. This—incredibly self-indulgent episode—is part explainer, part therapy session, where I talk about the idiosyncrasies of what I do for a living, my process as a writer, and what it’s really like on my side of the screen. It’s something that I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time, and honestly it felt really good getting it out there. To round out this episode I also read what I consider to be my personal favourite piece of feature writing of my career so far: my profile of Sheffield’s Brewery of St. Mars of the Desert. If you’re interested in writing, especially regarding food and drink, then this episode is for you.You can pre-order Matthew's new book Modern British Beer here.