Speaker: Neil Hanson.

Neil has been an Oxford graduate, a plasterer’s mate, an ice cream seller, a holiday camp
redcoat, an art critic and a rugby league commentator!

He’s edited the boozer’s bible – the Good Beer Guide, and later owned Britain’s highest
inn, in a wild and remote corner of the Yorkshire Dales, and also went round the world
twice and worked as a print journalist and radio broadcaster in Britain, Australia and New
Zealand.

He is now a very successful author with over 60 published books. As well as his own work,
he’s also a “ghost writer” for, among others, sports stars, showbiz legends, captains of
industry, SAS men, pilots, and many more. (He will be coming to talk to us next year about
this role.)

“Inn & Out at the Top” is a laugh-a-minute tour of the quirks and foibles, highs and lows of
running Britain’s highest inn – so isolated that it’s next door neighbour was 4 miles away
and so high above sea level that it had its own climate, with winds that could tear car
doors off their hinges, and winter snows that cut off the inn for weeks on end. Neil will
give us an account of his time at the inn, grappling with tight-fisted farmers, eccentric
characters, bizarre local customs, naturist weekends, “lates and lock-ins”, police raids, rats
in the attic, close encounters with magistrates, and planners and the shooting of a famous
glazing commercial.