Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick

One of the most powerful books I’ve read this year, Dick’s science fiction classic is a thought provoking observation on empathy and what it means to be human.

In a future world devastated by nuclear war, Rick Deckard is a licensed bounty hunter employed by the state to ‘retire’ renegade androids; exact breathing replicas almost indistinguishable from human beings, created as slaves for the off-world colonies.

Deckard’s ultimate goal is to own a real animal, now incredibly rare after the World War Terminus, and his mission to kill off half a dozen Nexus-6 androids is inextricably bound to his desire to replace the electric sheep on his rooftop with a living, breathing goat.

With most items now synthesised or modified, even comestibles we currently take for granted are incredibly rare or impossible to obtain. Alcohol features only twice in the book, but the poignancy of a glass of Chablis or bottle of bourbon made before the WWT and the subsequent radioactive dust is almost crushing.

Deckard’s mission almost comes unstuck when he starts to empathise with his quarry and even believes it possible to fall in love with an android. The beautiful Rachel Rosen flies down from Seattle to San Francisco to meet him in a hotel room, bringing a special gift in a paper bag:

She held out the paper bag. “I bought a bottle. Bourbon... It’s worth a fortune, you realize. It’s not synthetic; it’s from before the war, made from genuine mash.”

The effect on Deckard is intoxicating:

He sipped the bourbon; the power of it, the authoritative strong taste and scent, had become almost unfamiliar to him and he had trouble swallowing. Rachel, in contrast, had no difficulty with hers.

But that’s because Rachel, being an android, can feel nothing...

London's Best Pubs by Peter Haydon

A quick foray back into non-fiction this week for Peter Haydon’s beautifully produced guide to London’s most interesting and unusual pubs. I include it because it contains not one but two pictures of my favourite pub cat, Tom Paine at the Seven Stars, but also a rather fine historical introduction to the public houses of London.


Descended from coaching inns, taverns and alehouses, the London pub as an institution has changed considerably over the last few hundred years. Back in the 1700s, for example, the drink of the tavern was wine, until wars with France conspired to disrupt supply. Portugal came to the rescue:

Our long-standing friendship with Portugal meant that port was the popular tavern drink of the 18th century. Consumed as it was in very large volumes, port can be considered largely responsible for having made the 18th century the era of gout and the skull-splitting hangover.

William III’s policy to wean the population off wine popularised gin instead. He succeeded only in making the nation drunk. Indeed, until this point, alcohol wasn’t really considered particularly harmful:

...with gin came the revelation that there was an alcoholic drink that was actually bad for people.

After the gin fevers of the 18th and 19th centuries came the Temperance movement and drink as a political issue. London’s taverns, gin palaces and inns have been shaped by licensing acts, brewery speculation, social mores and trends and have arrived in the beginning of 21st century as unique and remarkable public spaces. Haydon describes them thus:

For me, the chief virtue of a pub is that it can almost anything you want it to be. Provided you do the landlord the courtesy of buying a drink you can stay as long as you like, be as gregarious or reticent as you like and be as idle or as studious as you like. You can enjoy the company of all or engage in solitary reverie. You can talk to strangers, make lifelong friends, catch up on gossip, commit to memory a cracking good joke for later use, hold forth on any subject close to your heart and leave whenever you wish (within opening hours, of course). The pub is egalitarian, libertarian, non-judgemental and subversive. For these reasons alone, I rate it as priceless.

He helpfully includes an excellent quote from Dr Johnson, regular at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese:

No, Sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

I’ll quite happily raise a glass to that.

Wilt by Tom Sharpe

I hadn't read Tom Sharpe since I was at school so there was some reassurance in finding that Wilt, his satire on education, women’s liberation and the sexual revolution, was just as I remembered him. It's a bit dated now, but once it gets into its stride parts of it are still hilariously funny. There are a lot of references to rather outré sexual practices, as in all of his books, and plenty to booze, which gets it an entry here.

Downtrodden at his dreadful lecturing job (he is employed by a technical college to teach The Lord of the Flies to apprentice butchers, plasterers and gas fitters) and henpecked by his wife Eva, Henry Wilt dreams of asserting himself, if only he knew how. While he fantasises about killing Eva he has no idea how by going to a ghastly barbecue party things conspire to make it look like he’s actually got his way.

The Pringsheims, a visiting chemistry professor from America and his bonkers wife, have invited Wilt and Eva round to their little soiree. Unfortunately, neither realise that Sally Pringsheim has designs on Eva, and is prepared to stoop to any level to get her away from her husband. Wilt doesn’t help himself by drinking a little too much punch at the party:

In the end he looked into a large bucket with a ladle in it. Half an orange and segments of bruised peach floated in a purple liquid. He poured himself a paper cup and tried it. As he had anticipated, it tasted like cider with wood alcohol and orange squash.

Despite initial misgivings, he has a bit more:

Wilt stood in the middle of the garden and finished his third drink. He poured himself a fourth...

Drunk and suddenly cornered by Sally Pringsheim, he finds himself taken upstairs where Sally produces a bottle of vodka:

‘Oh, Henry, you’re so perceptive,” said Sally, and unscrewed the top of the vodka bottle... She swigged from the bottle and gave it to Wilt. He took a mouthful inadvisedly and had trouble swallowing it.

What follows is a disastrous set of events involving public humiliation with an inflatable sex doll, a thirty foot deep hole and twenty tons of concrete...

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Famously starting each entry with a run down of the day’s consumption of calories, cigarettes and units of alcohol, Fielding’s book captured the lives of unmarried thirty-somethings so astutely that it’s now a publishing byword for books aimed at the same demographic.

The eponymous heroine starts the year with great intentions to eat properly, get a boyfriend and to drink less, but pretty soon on into 1995 things are beginning to slip. Not only has she got involved with a complete bounder, but he’s giving her the run around. There is only one course of action which is to get thoroughly drunk with her friends, leading to the inevitable the next day:

8 a.m. Ugh. Wish was dead. Am never, ever going to drink again for the rest of my life.

8.30 a.m. Oooh. Could really fancy some chips.

11.30 a.m. Badly need water but seems better to keep eyes closed and head stationary on pillow so as not to disturb bits of machinery and pheasants in head.

The course of true love never running smooth, Bridget finds herself back with the cad. Unfortunately, he’s also engaged to someone else. This new revelation leaves her needing the support that only good friends and hard spirits can provide:

Went immediately to Tom’s, who poured vodka straight down my throat from the bottle, adding the tomato juice and Worcester sauce afterwards.

As Bridget bumbles from one minor setback and humiliation to the next, she approaches Christmas, a season in hell for the singleton. The round of parties and get-togethers seem designed to point out her miserable status, as well as play merry hell with her alcohol intake:

For ten days now have been living in state of permanent hangover and foraging sub-existence without proper meals or hot food.

Never mind. Things turn out fine in the end and she finishes the year in the arms of Mr Right...

The Reason Why by Cecil Woodham-Smith

One of the most popular histories of the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade, Woodham-Smith’s The Reason Why focuses on two the main protagonists in the debacle; George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan and James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan.

Woodham-Smith describes how the ‘purchase system’ allowed both of these stubborn and inexperienced aristocrats to rise to positions of command by buying their way through the ranks. Pushed out of one regiment for his bullying and autocratic behaviour, Cardigan was put in charge of the 11th Hussars where he used his own money to turn the regiment into a stylish and flamboyant outfit. He achieved some degree of success in this, despite dissent from some of his officers, a situation that led to the ‘black bottle’ affair.

Cardigan’s main beef was with the ‘Indian’ officers, men who had gained proper military experience while the regiment had been stationed in India. They resented his pushiness and his use of the 11th to show off to London society. He thought their conduct unbecoming. Nothing they did was right, not even what they drank in the mess:

In India it had been the custom for officers to drink porter – it was healthier and cheaper. To this the lieutenant-colonel furiously objected. Porter was the drink of factory hands and labourers, and he wished to make the 11th famous for its splendid hospitality, for he loved the pomp and ceremony of ‘great’ dinners. He forbade bottled porter to appear on the mess table.

General Sleigh is invited to dine with Cardigan’s regiment and he entertains him extravagantly with a formal do in the mess. All is going swimmingly until one of the guests asks for an alternative to champagne. An ‘Indian’ officer called over for a waiter:

General Sleigh’s aide asked if he might have Moselle instead of champagne, and John Reynolds gave the order to a mess waiter, who, anxious to supply the wine at once, did not stop to decant it, but placed it on the table in its bottle. At this moment Lord Cardigan looked down the table, and there, among the silver, the glass, the piles of hot-house fruit, he saw a black bottle – it must be porter!

Cardigan was transported with rage. This upstart officer, an ‘Indian’ to boot:

...was drinking porter under his very nose, desecrating the splendour of his dinner table. When it was explained that the black bottle contained Moselle, he refuse to be appeased; gentlemen, he said, decanted their wine.

One of the lieutenant-colonel’s muckers is sent around the next day to remonstrate:

“The colonel had desired me to tell you,” said Captain Jones, “That you were wrong in having a black bottle placed on the table at a great dinner like last night. The mess should be conducted like a gentleman’s table and not like a pot-house.”

Well, standards have to be maintained...

A Partial Indulgence by Stephanie Theobald

A phantasmagoria of excess and high-art, Theobald’s novel is a riot of indulgence, from food, to sex, to good painting, and of course, alcohol.


High society art dealer Charles Frederick de Vere leads a life of debauchery and opulence but his extravagant existence is quickly unravelling, haunted by his shady past and the death of his lover. As he slowly descends into his own personal hell, his former companions; Boston tough-cookie Carmen and wild spirit Cosima, niece of his childhood friend Ellsworth, drift in purgatory styled as a country home, soaking up ‘pre-meds’ that taste of red wine.

Freddy’s first meetings with Cosima are at Ellsworth’s country pile where the talented artist is knocking out forgeries for the London market. He cooks her eggs and caviar while tantalising her with the French dish of Ortolan:

“Tiny song birds from France. Illegal to eat. You lock them in a box, gorge them on figs and then drown them in Armagnac... You’re supposed to put a cloth over your head when you eat them. To keep in the fumes.” He drinks. “But mostly to hide yourself from the eyes of God.”

However Cosima and Ellsworth are now long dead and Carmen looks set to join them. The increasingly spooked de Vere looks back on his life and his school days with Ellsworth, who appeared one night with a bottle of claret looted from his father’s cellar:

He was holding a bottle of wine. On the label I could see a large letter ‘V’, a golden laurel and the words: Mouton Rothschild 1945 – L’Année de la Victoire. “They blather on about Château Petrus,” he said, starting to open the bottle, “But the day before I go to hell I shall drown my sorrows in a bottle of Mouton ’45.” When he’d pulled the cork out he smelled it. “Still a trace of death,” he said, tossing it into the fire.

The wine leaves a bad taste in Freddy's mouth:

My stupor at the richness of the taste was heightened by the fact that there was something almost disgusting about the wine. “Horrible, isn’t it,” Ellsworth said, his eyes filled with glee. “Funny that they call it victory wine,” I observed. “Why funny?” He frowned. “Why should victory be a pleasant flavour?”

Why indeed? Ellsworth’s penultimate act is to open a bottle of Mouton ’45 on the night he commits suicide...

Twelve Step Fandango by Chris Haslam

Be careful what you wish for. Martin Brock, a lowlife drug dealer working the Costa del Sol, dreams of a motorbike and a big stash of cocaine that will set him up for life and get him away from his home in a ruined Spanish hill castle and his crazy German girlfriend, Luisa. Then both the bike and the charlie turn up on the same day...


It’s fair to say that Martin’s use of recreational drugs and drink might have hampered his ability to make the right decision in a crisis. The day a runaway Parisian drug mule arrives with his ticket to a better life, he’s already fuddled:

Within the space of ninety late-afternoon minutes I had snorted up a quarter gram of coke, smoked an eighth of that blinding kif, and then knocked back half a pint of 80-proof home-grown aguardiente. It was reasonable to expect that I might be feeling a little off-centre...

When the Frenchman dies, Martin discovers an unbelievable quantity of very good cocaine hidden on the man’s bike. Now set for the big time, there’s just one thing to sort out; informing the unfortunate man’s next of kin. Who just might know what their lad was up to and want their property back.

Before long, Martin realises that he’s a very small fish in a very nasty pond. Desperate to get shot of the haul, he’s persuaded to go to Cadiz to meet with a contact who might be able to shift the drugs. Having hidden the cocaine in a ruined farmhouse, he’s out of toot and trying to wash away the twin horrors of jangled nerves that need cocaine and travelling with the equally irritable Luisa by drinking more fire water:

I necked the shot and left them... feeling light-headed, unsteady and frustrated as I stumbled into the lamplit alley. Something unravelled deep in my gut, blinked and belched an acid spray against my colon, sending my knotty quadriceps into spasm and causing my knees to tremble. I stood for a moment with my brow pushed against the cool glass of a milliner’s window, blaming my pain on that last glass of aguardiente.

He’s in a mess, and he knows it:

Too much alcohol had been consumed in too short a time as a result of there being no cocaine available to make life more bearable.

Unfortunately for Martin, things are just about to get a lot, lot worse...

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David

A legend in food writing, Elizabeth David arrived back in Britain in 1946 to find food severely rationed and olive oil only available from the chemists. She put her reminiscences of the food she’d enjoyed in the Mediterranean into her first book, Mediterranean Food, which appeared in 1950, followed by volumes on the food of Italy and provincial France.

David is rightly remembered for her writing as well as her cooking and An Omelette and a Glass of Wine is a delightful compilation of journalism and recipes that first appeared in The Spectator and Vogue among other publications.

In the article that gives the book its name, David sets out a simple philosophy for enjoying food and wine, in this case a cheese omelette and a glass of white:

I like white wines with all cheese dishes, and especially when the cheese in question is Gruyère. No doubt this is only a passing phase, because as a wine drinker but not a wine expert one’s tastes are constantly changing. But one of the main points about the enjoyment of food and wine seems to me to lie in having what you want when you want it and in the particular combination you fancy.

Of course, you may choose to finish your meal with a dessert, perhaps an apricot tart, washed down with something sticky:

The custom of drinking a little glass of rich wine with a sweet dish or fruit seems to me a civilized one, and especially welcome to those who do not or cannot swig brandy or port after a meal... The musky golden wine of Beaumes – according to Mr Asher, and I see no reason to quarrel with his judgement, ‘its bouquet is penetrating and flower-like, its flavour both honey-sweet and tangy’ – and the sweet apricots, vanilla-sugared on crumbly pastry, made an original and entrancing combination of food and wine.

I will finish with her memories of Norman Douglas, an old friend of David’s, whose South Wind I am eyeing up for a future post:

There, at a table outside the half-ruined house, a branch of piercingly aromatic lemons within arm’s reach, a piece of bread and a bottle of the proprietor’s olive oil in front of me, a glass of wine in my hand, Norman was speaking. ‘I wish you would listen when I tell you that if you fill my glass before it’s empty I shan’t know how much I’ve drunk.’

Sage advice indeed.