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
Why Remoaners should back Boris
“Boris, ironically, now offers Remoaners the best chance of a soft Brexit, or at least a sensible one. And to those who want a second referendum—’the people’s vote’—there may even be a chance of that too.”
On the road
“In the summer of 1980, in the grip of some Kerouac-ish fantasy, I opted to hitch-hike from Laredo to New York”
Discovering the Great War of China
A third of a million Chinese labourers helped the Allies defeat the Kaiser, but their huge unsung contribution ended in betrayal