38: Literary Drinking: Alcohol in the Lives and Work of Writers

Booze as muse or a sure road to ruin? In this month’s episode, William Palmer – author of In Love with Hell: Drink in the Lives and Work of Eleven Writers – and Henry Jeffreys – author of Empire of Booze and The Cocktail Dictionary – join the Slightly Foxed team to mull over why alcohol is such an enduring feature in literature. 

From the omnipresence of cocktails in John Cheever’s short stories and ritual aperitifs in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels to Mr Picksniff falling into Mrs Todger’s fireplace in Martin Chuzzlewit and P. G. Wodehouse’s hangover remedies for booze-soaked Bertie Wooster, drinks are social signifiers in fiction. Charles Dickens was fond of sherry cobblers and Jean Rhys knocked back Pernod in Paris, while Malcolm Lowry was a dipsomaniac and Flann O’Brien dreamed up alcoholic ink for the Irish Times, rendering readers drunk from fumes. We ask why gin denotes despair and port is always jovial, and question whether hitting the bottle helps or hinders the creative process in writers.

Following a convivial sherry, we’re whisked away on a wet-your-whistle-stop tour of drinking dens with our friends at London Literary Tours, barrelling from bars propped up by Oscar Wilde to the follies of Dylan Thomas at Soho’s French House via Ian Fleming’s Vesper cocktail at Dukes. And we finish with a final round of reading recommendations, visiting a whisky distillery in Pakistan in Lawrence Osbourne’s The Wet and the Dry, enjoying Happy Hour with Marlowe Granados and stopping for a nightcap at Kingsley Amis’s ghostly local The Green Man.

(Episode duration: 41 minutes; 16 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information.

• Anne Fadiman, The Wine Lover’s Daughter, Slightly Foxed Edition No. 57 (1:39)
• William Palmer, In Love with Hell: Drink in the Lives and Work of Eleven Writers (2:24)
• Henry Jeffreys, Empire of Booze (2:33)
• Henry Jeffreys, The Cocktail Dictionary
• Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (3:41)
• Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking (4:45)
• Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman (6:40)
• Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (11:16)
• Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight (11:49)
• Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley (12:17)
• Patricia Highsmith, Diaries and Notebooks
• Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (14:54)
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