Comment: Davenports' revival gives us the thirst for nostalgia
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
News that Davenports pubs are going to become a part of the social drinking fabric of the city again after decades should be welcomed by ale fans – and anyone who thinks fondly of Birmingham in that era.
Birmingham is proud – and rightly so – of having thrown off the dowdy out-of-date image saddled on it by an ignorant London-centric media.
But there’s no harm in a bit of nostalgia for the times when Birmingham-built cars were still driven around the country, Labour had an unassailable hold on the local government, and Birmingham’s local brewers had yet to be supplanted by global lager chains.
So Highgate Brewery ought to be congratulated for bringing back a part of that heritage, in the form of a Davenports pub near Five Ways – the first time the sign will be seen since 1987. The City Tavern, on Bishopsgate Street, will be a reminder of the times the “beer at home means Davenports” jingle was often to be heard on television.
While the classic Brummie pint of Brew XI limps on in a debased form, brewed by Welshmen under licence from Americans, Highgate Brewery has made the effort to keep Davenports authentic, including hiring ex-Davenports staff to check up on the taste.
Like the Proustian madeleine, a sip on a pint of Davenports might be enough to bring back a lost time. When the narrator of A la recherche du temps perdu gets his first taste of the childhood madeleine, he exclaims: “at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory.”
A few pints of Davenports might bring on a similar feeling – surely a good thing in these trying times.
