James Squire: The Biography

by Glen Humphries

Overview

After getting caught swiping a few chickens from a neighbour, James Squire was sentenced to seven years in Sydney Cove. You could say it was the best thing he ever did - it led to him become a brewer, policeman, property tycoon, respected citizen and a bloody rich guy. 
 
All because of the theft of a few chooks. 
 
But if all you know about James Squire is what you’ve read on labels on beer bottles, then you really don’t know that much at all. This book - the first biography of Squire - separates the facts from the well-known myths about his life. For instance, he never stowed away on the First Fleet ship carrying female convicts, didn’t get lashed for stealing the ingredients to make beer and might not have been the first person to grow hops in Australia. 
He was also a man who may have used a false name on his daughter’s birth certificate, loathed people who cut down trees on his property and got along far better with the natives than most of the other white newcomers. 
Along the way you’ll also discover a few other things about Sydney Cove, including Captain Arthur Phillip’s efforts to get his hands on some Aboriginal heads for a friend, early Australian’s fondness for cider rather than beer, the fight rival brewer John Boston had over a dead pig and the marine who tried to trade his hat for an Aboriginal child.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940155027164
Publisher:	Last Day of School
Publication date:	11/30/2017
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	455 KB

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 wasn’t 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 band’s 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? He’s not really sure – it just happens. He’s @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 there’s 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 on Amazon of one of his books. Probably not. He hates exercising but does it so he doesn’t feel guilty about skipping it. And also so he doesn’t get fat. Well, fatter. He recycles and has a worm farm at home – if the world is going to get wrecked he doesn’t want it to be his fault. Fred Flintstone’s fat gut was a source of amazement to Glen. If Fred had to power his car with his feet, how come he didn’t 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 you’ve made it all the way to this point, he is impressed.