Roger Protz

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Roger Protz is a British writer, jounrnalist and campaigner.

He joined the Labour Party Young Socialists and became editor of its newspaper, New Advance. While remaining in the Labour Party, he joined the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League (SLL). In 1961, he resigned from New Advance to become the editor of the SLL's youth newspaper, Keep Left. [1] He was sacked from that, he says, for being too left-wing.

Within a few years, he moved to the rival Revolutionary Socialist League, where in 1964 he became the founding editor of Militant.[2] After leaving the RSL, he joined the International Socialists where in 1969 he became the editor of Socialist Worker. He was expelled from the editor's role in 1974, and soon afterwards from the party, going on to found the Workers League.

He was an early member of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) in 1971, and has written several books on beer and pubs. He is the editor of CAMRA's Good Beer Guide, and is a writer on beer in the UK and regularly contributes to The Guardian.

In the mid-1970s, he was a tutor in magazine journalism at the London College of Printing.

Protz also frequently contributes article to website beer-pages, which he co-edits with Tom Cannavan. He writes a weekly column for the Morning Advertiser, a monthly column for What's Brewing, and also contributes to Beers of the World and All About Beer (US). In March 2007, he lectured on the history of beer to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. In 1988 he founded the British Guild of Beer Writers and was chairman of the Guild 2000-2003. His awards include two golden and five silver tankards from the Guild and he was named Glenfiddich Drink Writer of the Year in 1997 and 2004.

He is married and has two children and lives in St Albans.