Glen Humphries - James Squire: The Biography

This ones for my parents, who like to tell people hey, our son wrote a book. Now they can say hey, he wrote another one.

Praise for The Slab: 24 Stories of Beer in Australia

The Slab takes episodes from the long and rich saga of beer in this country ... and presents them in a highly readable way, spiced with self-deprecating humour and quirky asides.

Max Allen, Australian Financial Review

A thoroughly entertaining and interesting read - regardless of whether or not you have any enthusiasm for beer.

The Crafty Pint

I loved this book and am confident you will, too.

Roger Hanson , Hobart Mercury

...filled with entertaining anecdotes detailing the role beer has played in the history of the land Down Under.

Beer & Brewer

History as it should be written. With beer. About beer

John Birmingham, author of Leviathan

The Slab is a full-bodied book, with a fruity aftertaste and a nose that carries the slightest hint of sawdust and vomit. I suggest you XXXX it.

David Hunt, author of Girt

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Glen Humphries is an award-winning beer writer and author of The Slab: 24 Stories of Beer in Australia . He is also a journalist at the Illawarra Mercury , where he was the movie reviewer for eight years. That meant he got to go to movies during the day and call it work. Yes, he made out it wasnt as easy as it seemed but he was full of crap getting paid to see movies is great. Even the ones with Adam Sandler in them. He was once credited as a tambourine player on a bands CD. He runs the beer blog Beer Is Your Friend (beerisyourfriend.org) and the mirco-publishing site Last Day of School (lastdayofschool.net), where you can purchase all his books. Where does he find the time to raise a family, work full-time, write two blogs and two books? Hes not really sure it just happens. Hes @26bear on Twitter, where he has wrapped far too much of his self-worth into getting to 1000 followers. He has never been able to understand why Wonder Woman has an invisible jet when you could see her sitting in it. Hey, look theres Wonder Woman just sitting in the sky. She must be in her invisible jet. See, total waste of time. To this day he dislikes people if they stand on the right while riding an escalator. He insists on putting dollar notes the right way up in his wallet, and in order of denominations starting with the lowest at the front. As far as the coins go, he just shoves them in his pocket. He Googles his own name far more than is strictly necessary. One day he hopes someone will leave a review online of one of his books. He wonders if he can get away with saying The Slab was nominated for a Walkley Award when he was the one who nominated it. Probably not. He hates exercising but does it so he doesnt feel guilty about skipping it. And also so he doesnt get fat. Well, fatter. He recycles and has a worm farm at home if the world is going to get wrecked he doesnt want it to be his fault. Fred Flintstones fat gut was a source of amazement to him. If Fred had to power his car with his feet, how come he didnt burn off all that extra weight? He also wrote a stupidly long About the author blurb for The Slab . It was done to give the reader value for money; you know, fill up what would otherwise be a largely blank page with entertaining stuff to read. If youve made it all the way to this point, he is impressed.

JAMES SQUIRE

The Biography

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this publication contains names of people who have passed away.

Copyright Glen Humphries 2017

ISBN: 978-0648032328

James Squire: The Biography is first published in 2017 by Last Day of School

Websites: lastdayofschool.net or beerisyourfriend.org

For more information, to purchase additional copies or just to say how fantastic this book is email . If you hated it, well, that you can keep to yourself.

This book is copyright. All rights reserved. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquires can be directed to the author at . Do you reckon anybody reads this copyright page? Well, anyone but you obviously. Youre a person with admirable attention to detail. Not like those others who just skip to the start of the book. They dont know what theyre missing, do they?

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Humphries, Glen, author.

Title: James Squire : the biography / Glen Humphries.

ISBN: 9780648032311 (paperback)

Subjects: Squire, James, 1754-1822.

First Fleet, 1787-1788Biography.

ConvictsAustraliaBiography.

PioneersAustraliaBiography.

BrewersNew South WalesSydney.

Hops industryAustraliaHistory.

Acknowledgements

T his is my second published book (there are a few manuscripts on the shelves in the study that will likely never see the light of day) and it doesnt get easier.

Thats the thing with writing; people seem to think those who publish books have some innate talent. Really the thing you need most is discipline; the ability to sit in front of a computer and bash words onto the screen when youd really rather be doing anything else. And guilt helps too; its hard to fob off doing work on the book when you know youll feel bad about it later.

The planning and publishing side of things was easier the second time around because I knew what I was doing. But the writing? Well, that never gets easier. So if youre a budding writer and youre finding it difficult, then dont worry. That just means youre doing it right.

As with my last book, The Slab , the first person to thank is my wife Kim for giving me the space to hide away and type for hours almost every weekend, and for being understanding about the need to do it. And also for her efforts in proofreading this book. Thanks also go to our daughter Josie, for her incredible ability to amuse herself with the iPad while I was writing this book.

My sister Amy allowed me to borrow her stellar proofing skills when I couldnt face having to read through my own book for the sixth time.

Squire researcher and descendent of the guy himself James Donohue went above and beyond the call when some guy hed never heard of started emailing him with random questions.

Along the same lines, John Boyd from the Fellowship of the First Fleeters was a great help at the start when I needed a bit of confirmation that I was on the right track.

Kate Shepherd served as cover designer again and turned my garbled instructions into a great cover. I think I owe her another case of beer.

Nick O from Crafty Pint, Max Allen in the Australian Financial Review and Roger Hanson from the Hobart Mercury all wrote nice things about my first book. Thank you one and all for that.

Last but not least, thank you to all those people who bought a copy of The Slab . Its good to know there are people out there who like reading about beer.

GLEN

Wollongong

November 2017