A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich

From biography to history, this time to John Julius Norwich’s A Short History of Byzantium. I one day intend to read all three volumes of his work on Byzantium, but this abridged version is still an excellent history of this most fascinating empire.


My introduction to Byzantium was through studying East European and Slavonic history many moons ago. Later on I found myself making a serious attempt at writing a historical novel set in 10th century Constantinople, (serious to the point that I did an unfinished first draft of 80,000 words before giving up), which involved a fair degree of research. This book was part of that background reading.

There were over eighty rulers of the empire between the founding of the city during the reign of Constantine I in the 4th century and its fall to Sultan Mehmet II in 1453. Some of them were great, some of them not so. Among the latter ranks is the Emperor Alexander, a previous co-emperor who was in fully in charge for just over a year: 912-913.

Norwich’s glorious description of Alexander explains the book’s inclusion in this blog. He describes his demise as ‘worn out... by dissipation’ which I interpret as that notorious combination of wine, women and song:

The only good thing that can be said about the reign of the Emperor Alexander is that it was short. Worn out at forty-one by dissipation, he was to occupy the throne for a little under thirteen months. His normal behaviour could be compared only to that of Michael the Sot at his worst: there were the same senseless cruelties, the same drunken roisterings, the same acts of wanton sacrilege. On one occasion he became convinced that the bronze boar in the Hippodrome was his other self, and had it provided with new teeth and genitals in an attempt to remedy the extraordinary wear and tear that he had inflicted on his own.

It is the use of the word ‘extraordinary’ in the above passage that makes me shudder...

Falling Towards England by Clive James

We devoured this, along with the earlier Unreliable Memoirs on a family holiday back in the 80s. James was a fixture on the telly by that point and was drafted in by the Beeb to do New Year’s Eve several years running as well as hosting his own show. He is a genuinely funny writer as well as a great mind, in my opinion, and although I laughed more reading the first book, volume two is still a hoot.


Its inclusion on the booze blog is for the following episode, where James attempts to get a job in the wine trade. Given that his idea of fine wine was “one that merely stained the teeth without stripping off the enamel” it was an interesting proposition but the interview is far from a success. He bluffs his way through at the beginning but it soon starts to go wrong.

My mumbled generalisations got me as far as the bar, but there he poured a glass of yellowish white wine and asked me to taste it. “This is a 1960 Trockenbocken hock from Schlockenglocken,” he rapped, or words to that effect. “Selling it through my club for a quid a bottle. What do you think?” I sniffed it, said it had a nice nose, sipped it, said it had a nice bottom, and sank the rest of it in one. “You know bugger all about wines,” announced T H Lawrence matter-of-factly.

After reading that, the phrase ‘bugger all’ got overused that summer...

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Bard had to make an appearance at some point, and he probably will again, but I thought I'd kick things off with The Scottish Play.


I don't know Macbeth as well as I should, but I do know the following quote which tells you all you need to know about the pitfalls of drinking until ‘second cock’. It points out rather nicely the duality of booze: it ‘provokes the desire’ but takes away any capability...

MACDUFF. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,
That you do lie so late?
PORTER. Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock; and
drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
MACDUFF. What three things does drink especially provoke?
PORTER. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir,
it provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an
equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens
him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion,
equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.

After that my conscience is suitably pricked to decide that I really must see the play performed.

The Book of Proverbs

Thank you to everyone who has given suggestions for future posts after yesterday’s request. My friend Paul responded with an excerpt from Chapter 23 of Proverbs, which illustrates the ‘pain and perils’ of the demon drink.

I have repeated the passage here using the King James Authorised Version of 1611 which I have chosen because of its influence on English language and literature.

Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.
(Proverbs 23:29-33)

Paul adds: “You’ll also find brutally honest accounts of good men coming unstuck thanks to too much of the bottle (or wineskin, I suppose), e.g. Noah (Genesis 9:20-27) and Lot (Genesis 19:30-38). Some less reputable fellows also got into sticky situations – see Esther 1:10-12 and 1 Kings 20:16-21. And the original ‘writing on the wall’ interrupted a particularly well lubricated evening, Daniel 5.”

I may well return to some of these at later dates, but looking back at even the more unapologetic accounts of over-indulgence that I’ve posted already, the ‘sting of the adder’ never seems far behind. Beware...

Murphy by Samuel Beckett

I have a soft spot for Beckett, abetted by performing Krapp's Last Tape on stage when I was seventeen. He is, I feel, better known for his plays, in particular Waiting for Godot and Endgame, however, he also wrote several books, two of which I obtained while on a trip to Dublin with my father back in 1994.


In the novel, Murphy has studied under a man called Neary, who could "stop his heart more or less whenever he liked and keep it stopped, within reasonable limits, for as long as he liked." At this next point in the book, Neary is in the Dublin General Post Office, beating his head against the buttocks of the statue of Cú Chulainn dying. Rescued by another former student, Needle Wylie, Neary comes to on the tram, thinking he's in the pub.

"Is it the saloon," said Neary, "Or the jugs and bottles?" ...It dawned on Neary that he was not where he thought. He rose. "What is the finest tram in Europe," he said, "To a man consumed by sobriety?" He made the street under his own power with Wylie close behind him. "But by Mooney's clock, " said Wylie, "The sad news is two thirty three."

It is, of course, three minutes into Holy Hour, and another fifty seven minutes before they can get a drink. Fortunately, Wylie finds a cafe that serves coffee fortified with three star brandy... I have to confess that I have not actually finished the book. A rail ticket from February 1996 sits between pages 120 and 121.

Blue Mondays by Arnon Grunberg

I chanced across a copy of this in Guildford Library a few years ago. With its fruity cover and lure of the seedy side of life, I picked it up.



The narrator is a nihilistic youth chronicling his dead end life in Amsterdam; firstly his teenage years and his amorous pursuit of a girl called Rosie, then his early twenties spent drinking heavily and visiting prostitutes. Hardly elevating, but there’s something about the detached prose that I liked, and I wasn’t alone. Apparently written on a dare, it sold 70,000 copies in the Netherlands and went on to be published in translation globally.

The book is awash with booze but his father’s sozzled performance at his son’s bar mitzvah seems as good an example as any:

After the service there was a reception, and for some reason there was no vodka, only Dutch gin. So my father had tossed back quite a few little glasses of Dutch gin even before he started to shake people’s hands...
That evening my father sat next to me in a grey suit that had been made specially for the occasion. He didn’t open his mouth. But in the middle of a speech by some rabbi he suddenly pulled me toward him by the jacket and whispered, “No more gin for me ever again. It makes me go all to pieces.”

Curiously, when I tried to find the book in the library a year later, it had disappeared from their catalogue...

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Lucky Jim was heartily recommended to me, and not just for its famous description of a terrible hangover. I must confess that having tried reading Kingsley Amis at school and not having got very far with him, I took a little persuading, but it was a very good recommendation...


History lecturer James Dixon is stuck at the house of his Professor for an interminable weekend of madrigals and recorder recitals when he decides to slope off to the pub. On his return he contrives to sink the best part of a bottle of port in one go; (The bottle had been about three-quarters full when he started, and was about three-quarters empty when he stopped) before making his way upstairs. Getting ready for bed, things start to go horribly wrong:

Suddenly feeling worse, he heaved a shuddering sigh. Someone seemed to have leapt nimbly up behind him and encased him in a kind of diving-suit made of invisible cotton-wool.

Worse is to come the next day:

He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.

Quite frankly, I'm not surprised...

Dear Bill by Richard Ingrams and John Wells

The Dear Bill letters in Private Eye were the fortnightly round-up of the week's events in politics during Margaret Thatcher's time in office. The Eye had previously satirised the Wilson administration with Mrs. Wilson's Diary, and they continued the theme during the Major Years with The Secret Diary of John Major aged 47 3/4, but Dear Bill was special. It was brilliant.


There's a family story that a copy of the letters, having been given to my father as a Christmas present, had been left lying on a table somewhere, when my Grandmother chanced upon them. She read a few and remarked that she didn't think that they ought to have been published! In my mind, Private Eye's Prime Ministerial satires have never achieved the humour that they did with this series, but I suppose I might be biased, as there are copious references to 'electric soup' and 'snorts' throughout, hence it's inclusion in the 120 Units blog.

The following is from 30 September 1988, and is my favourite. It gets quoted often, normally at length...

Dear Bill, Did Maurice get my obscene greetings from Madrid on his fax machine? I was left alone for hours in the Embassy while the Boss went off to discuss Gibraltar, and the Ambassador very kindly granted me the freedom of his den, complete with half a case of El Matador Knockout Infuriator. By the time I met up with the Boss in the Prado the horizon was performing a rhumba and when somebody mentioned El Greco I remember asking for a large one.

The letters somehow endeared Dennis to the nation as a sozzled old buffoon who was essentially harmless. I'm not sure that was the authors' intent, but it's telling that Wells finished up doing impersinations of Dennis by the end of the Thatcher's tenure in Downing Street.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I first read this when I was sixteen and it gripped me then like it did recently when I reread it. Steinbeck's depression era novel isn't really a drinking book, aside from the character of Uncle John, a troubled soul.


He gets drunk just once in 500 pages, but it's a set piece in obliteration as he downs two pints of whiskey. There's no pleasure in his liquor, he's drinking to get drunk as quickly as he can. This is the painful side of alcohol. Unlike Hašek’s cheery priest, Uncle John is sousing himself in an attempt to shut out his own personal hell.

Tom Joad is looking for his uncle. When he hears that he's gone off to get thoroughly pickled, he goes to the local store and interrogates the shop keeper:

“Well, sir, he got a couple pints of whisky an’ he didn’ say a thing. He pulled the cork an’ tipped up the bottle. I ain’t got a license to drink here. I says: “Look, you can’t drink here. You go outside.” Well, sir! He jus’ stepped outside the door, an’ I bet he didn’t tilt up that pint more’n four times till it was empty. He throwed it away an’ he leaned in the door. Eyes kinda dull. He says: “Thank you, sir,” an’ he went on. I never seen no drinkin’ like that in my life.”

Uncle John gets a sock on the jaw for his trouble about a page later...

Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser

The late George Macdonald Fraser took the character of Flashman from Tom Brown's School Days and invented a later history of womanising, cowardice and military glory.



It was my father who introduced me to Flashman, initially reading out the part in Flashman at the Charge when the titular hero gets completely 'foxed' on iffy Russian 'Champagne'. I knew then that I had to read some myself. This book comes from a job lot I bought in 2006 when attempting to read all twelve in a year. (I've not accomplished that yet...)

Partly a pastiche of the Prisoner of Zenda, Royal Flash is the second of the Flashman Papers 'edited' by Fraser. Here Flashy gets himself thoroughly pickled, unaware that he's about to get framed while drunk and incapable:

Being bored, I was careless, and didn’t keep to close and eye on my glass. It was a magnificent dinner, and the wines followed each other in brilliant succession. Everyone else punished them tremendously, as the Germans always do, and I simply followed suit. It was understandable, but foolish; I learned in later years that the only safe place to get drunk is among friends in your own home, but that evening I made a thorough pig of myself, and the long and the short of it was that “Flashy got beastly drunk”, to quote my old friend Tom Hughes.

Wonderful stuff, and sage advice, I might add.

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek

A must for any literary booze blog, here's the legendary toper, practical joker and Czech hero, Jaroslav Hašek.



The Good Soldier Švejk was a present for my 18th birthday from my parents and I therefore read it at the start of a period in my life I may look back on one day as the ‘pub years’. Švejk himself is a national icon, and in Hašek’s satire on the Great War there are copious references to drinking. I also have Cecil Parrott's translation to thank for adding the phrase 'thoroughly pickled' to my drinker's lexicon.

Flicking through the book at random, I find this episode where a boozy chaplain knocks out a whole bottle of rum he’s taken off a corporal:

“Jesus Mary,” gasped the corporal, observing that after a thorough swig half the bottle had disappeared.
“Oh you rogue, you!” said the chaplain, smiling and winking knowingly at the volunteer, “You’re even taking the name of the Lord in vain into the bargain The Lord must punish you for this.”
The venerable father again took a swig from the flat bottle and giving it to Švejk gave the imperious order: “Bottoms up!”
“War is war,” Švejk said good-humouredly to the corporal as he returned him the empty bottle, the emptiness being confirmed by a strange glint in the corporal’s eyes such as can only appear in a mental patient.

However, my favourite reference to drinking in the book has to come from a Colonel Shröder complaining about the capacity of the new intake to the Austrian army:

“...And the younger officers don’t even know how to hold their drink. It’s not yet twelve o’clock and around this table as you see there are five people drunk already. There were times when we sat for two days and the more we drank the more sober we were. We went on pouring beer, wine and liqueurs into ourselves without stop. Today there’s no longer the real military spirit...”

The drinker's lament: things just aren't what they used to be...