Beat Kümin asks, deep into his book, whether running a public house was a money-maker. It ‘will come as no surprise that there is no easy answer’, he says, bearing in mind ‘the usual variety’ of ‘types, locations, and socio-economic contexts’ (87). This did not bowl me over, as by now I was frustrated with his caution, and roll-call of variables that rules nothing out in truisms like this: ‘public houses were ubiquitous and highly differentiated establishments’ (49). Tentativeness is set in stone and little is clear. ‘What emerges most clearly’, Kümin stresses, is the ‘fundamental ambivalence of each and every aspect of tavern culture’ (126). And on the same page, turning now to whether public houses were civil or coarse, he cautions ‘once again it would be futile to attempt a generalizing judgement’. More middle ground building follows: ‘heterogeneity of contexts’ puts an end to ‘generalizing judgements’ about the rival pull of alehouse or church (178). The book is almost at an end now, and there ought to be a build-up of steam to bring it home. But the last chapter's hazy final sentence follows suit: ‘limits of generalizing accounts’ are raised like red flags, warning us again about the ‘complex interplay of settings, agents, period, and situations’ (189).

Drinking Matters is a commonsensical book, but there are times when we need more, and listing variables to describe ‘fundamental ambivalence’, ‘infinite versatility’, or ‘bewildering versatility’ is not enough (191). Examples flow, numbers are crunched, but interpretations are missing to glue things in place. Public houses need ‘a fresh synthesis’ and ‘comparative survey’, Kümin says (4), but not enough ground is covered for this to be a key comparative work: close study is limited to a region in Bern City Republic and another in nearby Bavaria. Other countries come and go from work by others, but all too often differences are noted but left up in the air. Let me give one example: keeping servants ‘varied from region to region, with female servants particularly conspicuous in central Europe’, but I was not told why (95). Yet this book can glow. Early modern public houses basked in a ‘golden age’, no less. Here Kümin dips his toe in the water: ‘the only meaningful generalization’, he writes, is that public houses were ‘great facilitators’ of ‘social exchange’ (191), relay stations for letters, information, hot news, and chit-chat. Public houses were Europe's main ‘news room’ and ‘political forum’, a point to argue about but which will surprise no-one (127, 130). But Kümin does delve into the old chestnut ‘public sphere’, dampening contributions of coffee-houses and restaurants, putting public houses in the driving seat of ‘partial, temporary, punctual [?], and thematic public spheres’ before 1700 (188). Clubs crammed into them, but they were also hubs of communities, tightening ties, hosting trade deals, credit links, and romantic match-ups. And their numbers grew steadily: a ratio in the region of one hundred people per public house was common, and this is more generous than in England today. A ‘remarkably broad clientele’ packed pubs, and alcohol was knocked back by most people, but ‘with social, chronological, and situational variations’ (192, 100). Inn bills peaked at a week's wages for craftsmen, and it is no shock that watering holes traced broader patterns of differentiation, although most drinkers were from middling stock, along with publicans who were ‘disproportionately prosperous and influential’ (192). Room and board were essential along well-trodden routes, and hungry travellers could get snacks or three-course meals with more choice at the top end, and doze off in one of England's 20,000 or so hostelry beds in 1790. Women dropped in for drinks, and Kümin notes the ‘prominence of female publicans’ (five per cent in Bern?), a plank in his argument that there was no ‘gradual masculinization’ of drinking dens (61, 168). Change was ‘evolutionary’, bit-by-bit public houses became more market-minded taking notice of tastes; not all of them, but enough to make a case that not everything ‘modern’ in food and drink happened after 1700.

Yet despite the periodic stronger tone or tempo, this book is hard to pin down. I felt a cloud of inconclusiveness descending from page one when ‘contested nature’ and ‘perennial negotiation’ are introduced as big themes (1). Above all this is a ‘perhaps’ sort of book, with scores of guarded variables: religion, region, season, situation, gender, social make-up, work, settlement size, landscape, media, town, country, market-forces, what's on the premises, the hand of government, and so on. Not one of these qualifiers is out of place. Things change all the time, and care and respect for sources and situations are tools of our trade. But debates must keep moving and for this we need interpretations. We would need more fingers than one hand's worth to count the times Kümin brings up ‘regional, typological, and situational differences’, clogging up interpretative flow. ‘How dangerous were alehouses’, he asks at the end of chapter four (141)? I almost want to put my hand up, as I think I know what the answer is, from work on London's shady alehouses and publicans up to their necks in crime, hosting round-the-clock drinking binges, feeling quite at home with sleaze. Not one alderman had anything good to say about the scourge of alehouses. But Kümin does not spend enough time on crime: there are six or seven pages on ‘subversive potential’ and many more on the credit side of the balance between good and bad effects. So, how dangerous were drinking houses? ‘There is, of course, no general answer’, Kümin writes, ‘rather an almost infinite range of political scenarios’ (141). ‘Once again’, he says, ‘the conclusion must emphasize the versatility of public houses’ (142).