In 1972, Courage was sold to Imperial Tobacco for £320 million after difficulties in the brewing industry and costly expansion plans. The deal showed that brewing groups were attractive to large diversified corporations. Beer was increasingly part of leisure, tobacco, hotels, and finance.

The sale helps explain why late twentieth-century pub literature often treats the brewer as a distant corporation rather than a local maker. It deepens the background to poems and essays that contrast inherited community with impersonal ownership, highlighting the tension between tradition and commercialization in cultural spaces.