Alcohol
My sober assessment of the fat jabs
It was my friend Alex who tipped me the wink. I bumped into him at a party earlier this year…
The day the King came to Ravenna
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna ‘Fortune’s a right whore: If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels,/ That she may…
Why I won’t accept the Laurels of Dante
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I have just refused to accept the local equivalent of an Oscar, which was to have been…
Drinking with The Chemist – and God
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The closest I get to a social life these days is when I sneak off into town…
Booze now has its own Rest is History-style podcast
Intoxicating History is the perfect title for drinks expert Henry Jeffreys and food critic Tom Parker Bowles’s new podcast. Its…
The highs and lows of Dry January
The first week of Dry January was relatively easy. Not falling asleep in front of the television was a pleasant…
My night with Mussolini’s ghost
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I came to Italy to write a biography of Benito Mussolini in the summer of 1998 and…
Could I limit myself to 100 bottles of wine in a year?
Back in January, I wrote about my new year’s resolution to cut down on my drinking. The thought of total…
From public bar to cocktail bar: books for the discerning drinker
There’s something for all tastes this year, whether poetic meditations on the pub, advice on wines for extended cellaring or recipes for new-wave martinis
The healing power of wine
What goes best with a broken rib? The answer, I think, is any drink you enjoy that will not make…
When in doubt, have a drink
Most Tory MPs enjoy leadership elections. There may be an element of what the trick-cyclists call ‘displacement activity’. Equally, it…
How to drown your sorrows
Age. At the Spectator party last week, the editor asked me how long I had been attending the festivity. I…
The key to dealing with this election? Wine
An old friend phoned. Normally cheerful, he was fed up. One of his business partners was being more than usually…
A lunch good enough to lift Tory spirits
Things could have been worse. My host was determined to lunch al fresco, and after all it was late June.…
The joy of Portuguese wines
There was a wonderful old boy called John – Sir John – Wordie, who was a quintessential member of the…
The best bottle to come from the Gigondas
One needs wine more than ever, yet when imbibing, it can be hard to concentrate. So much is going on.…
How to become an old soak
Drink and longevity: there seems to have been a successful counter-attack against the puritans, prohibitionists and other health faddists. Indeed,…
The real reason I don’t drink
It’s been 30 years this month since I last touched alcohol and I still can’t face the prospect of a…
The case for Churchillian drinking
Churchill. No disrespect to Andrew Roberts’s more recent work, but I set out to look up a point about drink…
The glory of German wines
I have had three recent conversations, all lively if unrelated – and all well lubricated. The first concerned Anglo-Saxon England…
They call me the ‘problem teetotaller’
My guts went on strike last July. I was staying in a hotel and I spent several days sprawled on…
Spiral of despair
John Niven had to fight hard to discover why his suicidal brother was left alone and unmonitored in an Ayrshire hospital, with fatal consequences
Kindred spirits
Students need a drunken freshers’ week
