Grab your pint glass and settle in: Netflix is dropping another historical, and this time it’s less “Bridgerton” balls and more Guinness pours and family squabbling.
“House of Guinness,” the latest series from “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight, pours itself into a pivotal moment for the Guinness brewery and family, as they try to chart a course for the future amid tragedy.
At the heart of the show is real history that, despite Guinness’ global fame, has been little told even in the history books, says Malcolm Purinton, an assistant teaching professor of history at Northeastern University who focuses on the history of beer.
Full of family drama, politics and high-stakes business dealings, it’s a story tailor-made for a post-“Succession” TV landscape, Purinton says. But it also makes sense of where Guinness is today.
“Last year, Guinness was hitting numbers that it never has,” Purinton says. “It started opening a new brewery in Chicago to meet this demand. It’s been skyrocketing. … I can see why Guinness, why [parent company] Diageo, would be interested in telling this story to keep that going.”
The story told in “House of Guinness” starts in 1868 with the death of Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, the owner of the brewery that even then was a household name.
In the aftermath of the patriarch’s death, the Guinness family had to reckon with what comes next, not only for them but for the company. Guinness had always been a business built on “family devotion,” Purinton says, but usually it was a simple matter of passing from father to only son.
In this case, Benjamin Lee left behind four children: Arthur, Anne, Benjamin and Edward. Notably, he put the keys to his stout empire in the hands of Arthur, his oldest son, and Edward, his youngest son.
“Interesting choice,” Purinton says. “The Arthur [decision] makes sense, just how things generally go to the oldest son. But the younger one: Edward was only 21. He was not even allowed to be the main guy. He wouldn’t have been allowed to take over the whole company.”
However, Edward, unlike his older brother, had already displayed a keen mind for business and real interest in the operations of Guinness’ St. James Gate brewery. The seeds of conflict were apparent from the beginning, especially with how Benjamin Lee wrote his will.
“[Benjamin Lee], in his will, made it exceptionally hard for the brewery to be taken apart,” Purinton explains. “In order for one son to leave the partnership, it would’ve been like basically deciding that son was going to be destitute. They would be getting almost nothing.”
Anne and Benjamin Guinness were largely on the sidelines of what happened between Arthur and Edward, Purinton notes with interest, given their roles in “House of Guinness.”
Gradually, over the next eight years, Arthur began to pull away from running the brewery. He took over his father’s parliamentary seat and made a brief run at a political career.
“Arthur’s wife was really not psyched about the whole brewery,” Purinton says. “He just wanted enough money to continue his lifestyle.”
Edward on the other hand took on more and more responsibility within Guinness, and by the time 1876 rolled around, he made his older brother an offer that was hard to refuse: a buyout. Edward became the sole owner of Guinness at 29 years old, buying out Arthur’s share for £600,000, about £60.3 million today.
He took what was already one of the largest breweries in the world and sent it into the stratosphere.
“Edward transforms Guinness,” Purinton says. “He kind of makes Guinness global in a way it wasn’t quite before.”
By 1879, the company was selling 565,000 casks, or hogsheads, of stout. By 1886, that had ballooned to 635,000 in Ireland alone, with another 212,000 sold in Britain and 60,000 in other countries across the globe.
However, Edward truly made history with his decision to take Guinness public as a company.
“This, in the history of business, is gargantuan,” Purinton says. “He says, ‘We want to expand more. I’m going to sell 65% of my shares in this public offering on the London Stock Exchange.’ It is insane how much money they made. It was just an absurd amount.”
Edward’s decision to go public made him the richest man in Ireland and allowed him to eventually retire at the age of 40 as a multimillionaire — and cement Guinness’ centuries-long legacy.
Guinness remains one of one in the world of beer, explains Purinton, who has spent extensive time in the Guinness archives. From the near-mythic symbolism of the Guinness harp to the viral conversation around the perfect pour and “splitting the G,” Guinness — and this story — is a case study in the power of beer and brands that actually mean something to people.
“It’s a brewery that has stood the test of time for centuries, but it’s also so specific that it’s easy to identify with that specificity,” Purinton says. “It’s also something where if you’re traveling, you can find a Guinness anywhere, and it’s going to taste exactly the same. … That’s something that can bring you back to whatever home you feel.”