Saintsbury
Through A Glass Lightly
A vintage volume of wine essays is worth savouring
David Garrick, Wine Merchant
The actor’s brief career as a wine dealer was a dismal failure, but something of this former way of life stayed with him
Befuddled Ambition
How drunken disorientation propels Bel Ami‘s protagonist to self-advancement
Sipping At The Symposium
Literary symposia from classical Athens to Muriel Spark
Drink In A Cold Climate
The law has changed its view of drunkenness greatly over time and from nation to nation
Ape And Grape
The drinking habits — and political inclinations — of the orang-utan
Veni, Vidi, Vinum
The Romans had a tendency towards alarming additives in their drinks
Grape Vs. Weed
Why Baudelaire preferred the healing effects of wine to the despondency of hashish
A Few Glasses Of Sheridan
The playwright Sheridan had a prodigious fondness for drink, even by the standards of his hard-drinking age
Sacramental Liquid
Drink, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s works, both reveals and debases
How Top Boys topple down crime’s ladder
Too many prisoners rejoin society with no education, stable housing or job prospects. No surprise that more than half reoffend within a year
In the bleak midwinter
Christmas can be a bleak time of year. While some feel isolated, others are overwhelmed by the need for a perfect family Yuletide when their reality is different
My warnings to our spy watchdogs
Britain is under attack from Russia. And the government is blocking a Parliamentary report that details it