Alcohol
A taste inquisition on Stink Street
Walking up through the Stink Street medieval arch with a bag of shopping, I spotted Michael between the oleander branches…
In defence of gambling
Doing good doesn’t always work out as expected. A regular entering his local pub takes pity on an old lady…
My neighbour’s dinner party was a near-death experience
At dawn, starving, I drove to a commercial laboratory in the town centre where five phials of blood were taken…
The joy of drinking alone
Thanks to a combination of night-time curfews, social-distancing rules, pubs closing, restaurants failing, the ‘rule of six’ and compulsory mask-wearing,…
How to save our nightlife after coronavirus
The one certainty about crisis is that it makes bad situations worse. Anyone working in restaurants, pubs, cafes and clubs…
Beware the COVID-19 nannies!
COVID-19 has suddenly made much of the western public health establishment effectively redundant. Unused to dealing with infectious disease, we…
Britain’s relationship with booze is beyond abusive
I’m not one of these teetotallers who frowns on people who imbibe, like an angsty ex-smoker who petulantly swats away…
Tips for Christmas tipples
It’s telling that perhaps the best wine book of last year, Amber Revolution by Simon Woolf, was self-published, though you’d…
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Alcohol is the perfect cure for deafness
New York A busy ten days, or nights rather, with some heroic drinking thrown in for good measure. Hangovers…
How to live life like a drunk
Since I’m not an alcoholic, recovering or otherwise, I don’t belong to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) but I am close to…
The joy of scrumpy
‘How’s your day going?’ said the taxi driver as he snapped his knob into drive. If I caught the plane…
I ended New Year’s Eve more sober than I started it
We were eight for dinner on New Year’s Eve: four men and four women with a combined age, I would…
Getting on – and falling off – the wagon
Radio 3 tries to distract listeners from music by posing little quizzes and hearing quirky details of history from a…
Who was the first suicide bomber?
The first suicide bomber Boris Johnson was criticised for likening Theresa May’s Chequers deal to a ‘suicide vest’ around the…
Dr Toby’s booze advice: the better the wine, the less bad it is for you
I don’t hold out much hope for Drink Free Days, a new campaign launched by Public Health England and the…
Remembering Soho: A conversation on debauchery, drunks and Francis Bacon
Christopher Howse has just written a book about Soho. He drank there regularly with Michael Heath, The Spectator’s cartoon editor,…
Who knew that Arabic has more than 30 words for wine?
You know you’re in good hands when the dedication reads: ‘To the writers, drinkers and freethinkers of the Arab and…
My Burns Night haircut
At three o’clock I took half a bottle of Glenmorangie with me to Jimmy’s. That it was Burns Night, and…
Did a vodka ban precipitate the Russian Revolution?
It’s one of the more mysterious features of human history that people of every era and in almost every place…
Jeremy Clark: Was this a cruise ship — or Colditz?
We ascended the gangplank and were smartly directed to the ship’s library, where the seated purser swiped my debit card…
Oxford is full of overindulged whiners. It wasn’t like that in my day
I was in the attic killing some Taleban on Medal of Honor when Girl interrupted and said: ‘Dad, what’s this?’…
Confessions of a Saga lout
Baby boomers like me aren’t giving up irresponsible hedonism as we age. We’re just getting worse at it
The poetic power of Patrick Hamilton's pubs
Nice airport was more or less deserted. Two-and-a-half hours early for the easyJet flight to Gatwick, I had a leisurely…
Mark Twain was right: it is our redeeming petty vices that make life worth living
Here I go again. I have stopped smoking. Until recently I had been smoking about 40 cigarettes a day, but…
Banish the canapé and give me a cocktail sausage!
Let’s get rid of these ridiculous thimble-sized offerings
