and I'm Marcus I'm the author of their
books I get mod kana and my new book is
a short history of drunkenness how why
where and when humankind has got marry
from the Stone Age to the present it's
basically about the history of drinking
and the cultural changes the way that
you've got drunk in ancient Egypt as
opposed the way you've got drunk in a
wild west saloon or in a week our
symposium so I've been doing an awful
lot of reading up on drinking and the
different ways people have drunk at
different times and become something of
a connoisseur of the way that writers
write about drinking one of the greatest
writers of all time anyway but the part
of the greatest poet of drinking I've
decided is pg Woodhouse wonderful
wonderful lives loans like thanked to be
obvious it's a absolute favorite of mine
yo people are being the little bit of
skin at the back of the throat and
there's also oil boiled fried plastered
with int and
sozzled and blotter fall in one sentence
indeed there's been a recent book arm
called high balls for breakfast which is
just a compilation of Peter Wood has
this great drinking the scenes and there
are wonderful wonderful books like
cocktail time or a few quick ones the
list goes on and on Doron of course
there's the great great scene in um
right ho Jeeves where Gussie fink-nottle
drinks for the first time drinks he will
he drink some whiskey and then as spike
to orange juice filled with vodka I
think visible Jim and I'm good utterly
utterly drunk
what riffled sozzled and blotto and says
I could bite a tiger which is one of my
favorite lines for a drinker ah another
book I came across which was very very
useful for I'm the studying history of
drinking was unbearable for there are
many translations this is a beautiful
one and in Beowulf there's a several
long descriptions of drinking scenes and
it's basically how the Vikings got
drunken
therefore gives you something of a
picture of what a Viking symbol as it
was
or the mead hall drinking feast was like
and it describes how the king would sit
down surrounded by his senior Nobles and
then on the other tables there would be
his warriors the first round of drinks
were served by the King's wife the Queen
would come around with the mead and
serve it out with a ladle into
everybody's pots it's not necessary a
perfect historical description but he
gave me a awful lot of the basis for my
chapter on Viking drinking and how
Vikings got drunk and it also gives you
some idea of how dangerous Viking
drinking is because though it all sounds
a bit fun never be you know getting
absolutely sloshed in a jolly
Scandinavian way towards the end of
Beowulf there's a lovely line when he
when he I'm afraid spoiler alert there
wolf dies and the people mourning him
say he was such a great man he was such
a wonderful guy he was a one-off the
kind of guy who never actually killed
any of his friends while he was drunk
it's the line ended that's if that
special praise for somebody imagine how
violent a Viking meet all must have been
and um finally because you have to face
up to this I'm guy third pick is gonna
be lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis wonderful
wonderful comic novel and also contains
that beginning of chapter six my
favourite description ever of a hangover
which I shall read out use one paragraph
long says Dixon was alive again
consciousness was upon him before he
could get out of the way not for him the
slow gracious wandering from the halls
asleep but a summary forcible ejection
he lay sprawled too wicked to move
spewed like a broken spider crab on the
terrace 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 for 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 to hit
some have been on a cross-country run
and then been expertly beaten up by the
secret police he felt bad
and so those are my three picks for my
favorite sour books about drinking a
side of course from my own thanks