Marston's plc (LSE: MARS) is a brewery which owns over 2,000 public houses in the United Kingdom and is the world's largest brewer of cask ale. It was known as Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries plc until 2007 when it rebranded as Marston's. In 2011 it had a 1.1% share of the UK beer market.

In 1834 John Marston established J. Marston & Son at the Horninglow Brewery at Burton upon Trent. Marston & Son Ltd amalgamated with John Thompson & Son Ltd and moved to Albion Brewery, where the company still operates.Banks & Co has been brewing at the Park Brewery since 1875. The Company was formed in 1890 as Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries by the amalgamation of Banks & Co. with George Thompson & Sons and Charles Colonel Smith's Brewery. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1947. It acquired Camerons Brewery in Hartlepool in 1992 and sold it to Castle Eden in 2002, whilst retaining some of Cameron's tied pubs .

In 1999 the Company purchased Marston, Thompson & Evershed of Burton upon Trent (including Marston's Brewery which had been founded in 1834). Also in 1999 the Company purchased the Mansfield Brewery Company of Mansfield which, in contrast to its other recent acquisitions, was soon closed down. Brands still bearing the Mansfield name are brewed elsewhere in the group.

Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. While he regarded himself primarily as a poet who composed novels mainly for financial gain, he became and continues to be widely regarded for his novels, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd. The bulk of his fictional works, initially published as serials in magazines, were set in the semi-fictional county of Wessex (based on the Dorchester region where he grew up) and explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.

Hardy's poetry, first published in his fifties, has come to be as well regarded as his novels and has had a significant influence over modern English poetry, especially after The Movement poets of the 1950s and 1960s cited Hardy as a major figure.