To Each Her Own

A conversation with the artist Ruth Batham

As I’m heading back out into the rain, she produces a bottle of beer for me to take away. I clock the label – Batham’s Best Bitter. Ruth Batham, the painter with whom I’ve been chatting for the past hour and a half at her home in the Slad Valley, is from that Black Country brewing dynasty. We talk about the local beers, the local pubs – she likes taking…