Everyday Drinking by Kingsley Amis (Bloomsbury, £9.99)
An early Billy Connolly routine describes a pair of bibulous Glaswegian brickies going on holiday in Italy. "When in Rome…" they decide, and ask a barman what the Pope prefers when he takes a drink. The sorry end to the story has them in a green vomit-spattered heap after a night downing pints of Crème de Menthe. "That's what the Pope drinks?" groans one. "No wonder they carry him round in a chair."
I've always felt slightly the same way about Kingsley Amis, whose fondness for Carlsberg Special Brew ("vandal-strength lager," as his son Martin described it in his memoir Experience) seems at first glance to disqualify him as a judge of drink. Amis recommends mixing spesh with normal Carlsberg to mitigate the alcoholic effects. Jesus. He was drinking it for the taste.
Such winning eccentricities aside, Amis was not only a serious drinker but a serious scholar of drink—as is demonstrated by this volume, which collects all his writings about booze and boozing. Bookended by an amusing glossary ("BIBBER—see SOD") and a generous index, it contains, repetitions and all, his short book On Drink, his columns for Esquire on the subject, and How's Your Glass, which is a sort of distillation of the previous two in pop-quiz format.
Amis's special expertise was beer, spirits and cocktails. He wasn't much interested in wine, and campaigned half-heartedly against it, or at least against the people who made a fuss about liking it. In part, this was a pose—or, if you prefer, a principled stand. One-upmanship annoyed him, but he evidently knew a fair bit about it. Of white wines, he praises hocks and moselles and deplores white burgundy: "closely resembling a blend of cold chalk soup and alum cordial with an additive or two to bring it to the colour of children's pee." He quotes a friend to the effect that sparkling burgundies are "forms of bottled death" but admits to liking fizzy red, possibly to bait wine snobs.
Above all, he knew what he liked and was unafraid to stick up for it. He had decided views on what other people liked, too. The pina colada, he wrote, is "just the thing for a little 95-IQ female, fresh from a spell on the back of the bike, to suck at while her escort plunges grunting at the fruit machine."
Amis's tone is characteristically brisk, and drily admonitory. Evelyn Waugh's Noonday Reviver (a toxic concoction of gin, Guinness and ginger beer) "will certainly revive you, or something. I should think two doses is the limit." Pure Polish Spirit is "80 PER CENT—not proof—alcohol, a drink to be tiptoed up to." At other points, you can see the specificity of proper fieldwork. The theory that a tumbler of olive oil "lines the stomach" was tested to destruction by an unnamed acquaintance: a dozen whiskies "laid him on the floor of the saloon bar of the Metropole Hotel, Swansea."
Amis regarded drink as a way of making conversation pleasant and other people tolerable. He despised meanness in a host, pretentiousness in a guest, and food or music in a pub. His seventh general principle was: "Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naive—or worse."
The most striking thing, reading this, is how tastes have changed. The abundance of cobblers, sweet liqueurs and fruit punches speaks strongly of the early 1970s. His list of "store-cupboard essentials" comprises: an orange liqueur, a cherry liqueur, Benedictine, Crème de Menthe, Crème de Cacao, Pernod, orange bitters, grenadine and sugar syrup. The fact that many drinks cabinets contain all these things, and that they have been there for three decades, attests to Amis's depth of influence—or something.
There are some cocktails of his own invention, and some ascribed to others. Reggie Bosanquet's Golden Elixir turns out to be a Bellini, as far as I can make out, and Woodrow Wyatt is immortalised in a cheat's Whiskey Collins. Speaking of cheats, Amis himself has a cheek. In one column he pronounces that Scotch is no good as the base of a cocktail. A couple of columns later he resiles, crediting Clement Freud ("the eminent radio panellist and non-smoker") with the Godfather: whisky and Amaretto poured over ice. Not long afterwards, he's boasting of "yet another Amis original, the Antiquato," which consists of, um, whisky and Amaretto over ice.
Antiquato indeed. As a guide to what wine to buy or what to serve at a party, this highly practical and scholarly book will be, to most modern tastes, completely useless. Yet it's a comic delight and an alco-literary history lesson. Keep it by the loo, not the drinks cabinet.
An early Billy Connolly routine describes a pair of bibulous Glaswegian brickies going on holiday in Italy. "When in Rome…" they decide, and ask a barman what the Pope prefers when he takes a drink. The sorry end to the story has them in a green vomit-spattered heap after a night downing pints of Crème de Menthe. "That's what the Pope drinks?" groans one. "No wonder they carry him round in a chair."
I've always felt slightly the same way about Kingsley Amis, whose fondness for Carlsberg Special Brew ("vandal-strength lager," as his son Martin described it in his memoir Experience) seems at first glance to disqualify him as a judge of drink. Amis recommends mixing spesh with normal Carlsberg to mitigate the alcoholic effects. Jesus. He was drinking it for the taste.
Such winning eccentricities aside, Amis was not only a serious drinker but a serious scholar of drink—as is demonstrated by this volume, which collects all his writings about booze and boozing. Bookended by an amusing glossary ("BIBBER—see SOD") and a generous index, it contains, repetitions and all, his short book On Drink, his columns for Esquire on the subject, and How's Your Glass, which is a sort of distillation of the previous two in pop-quiz format.
Amis's special expertise was beer, spirits and cocktails. He wasn't much interested in wine, and campaigned half-heartedly against it, or at least against the people who made a fuss about liking it. In part, this was a pose—or, if you prefer, a principled stand. One-upmanship annoyed him, but he evidently knew a fair bit about it. Of white wines, he praises hocks and moselles and deplores white burgundy: "closely resembling a blend of cold chalk soup and alum cordial with an additive or two to bring it to the colour of children's pee." He quotes a friend to the effect that sparkling burgundies are "forms of bottled death" but admits to liking fizzy red, possibly to bait wine snobs.
Above all, he knew what he liked and was unafraid to stick up for it. He had decided views on what other people liked, too. The pina colada, he wrote, is "just the thing for a little 95-IQ female, fresh from a spell on the back of the bike, to suck at while her escort plunges grunting at the fruit machine."
Amis's tone is characteristically brisk, and drily admonitory. Evelyn Waugh's Noonday Reviver (a toxic concoction of gin, Guinness and ginger beer) "will certainly revive you, or something. I should think two doses is the limit." Pure Polish Spirit is "80 PER CENT—not proof—alcohol, a drink to be tiptoed up to." At other points, you can see the specificity of proper fieldwork. The theory that a tumbler of olive oil "lines the stomach" was tested to destruction by an unnamed acquaintance: a dozen whiskies "laid him on the floor of the saloon bar of the Metropole Hotel, Swansea."
Amis regarded drink as a way of making conversation pleasant and other people tolerable. He despised meanness in a host, pretentiousness in a guest, and food or music in a pub. His seventh general principle was: "Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naive—or worse."
The most striking thing, reading this, is how tastes have changed. The abundance of cobblers, sweet liqueurs and fruit punches speaks strongly of the early 1970s. His list of "store-cupboard essentials" comprises: an orange liqueur, a cherry liqueur, Benedictine, Crème de Menthe, Crème de Cacao, Pernod, orange bitters, grenadine and sugar syrup. The fact that many drinks cabinets contain all these things, and that they have been there for three decades, attests to Amis's depth of influence—or something.
There are some cocktails of his own invention, and some ascribed to others. Reggie Bosanquet's Golden Elixir turns out to be a Bellini, as far as I can make out, and Woodrow Wyatt is immortalised in a cheat's Whiskey Collins. Speaking of cheats, Amis himself has a cheek. In one column he pronounces that Scotch is no good as the base of a cocktail. A couple of columns later he resiles, crediting Clement Freud ("the eminent radio panellist and non-smoker") with the Godfather: whisky and Amaretto poured over ice. Not long afterwards, he's boasting of "yet another Amis original, the Antiquato," which consists of, um, whisky and Amaretto over ice.
Antiquato indeed. As a guide to what wine to buy or what to serve at a party, this highly practical and scholarly book will be, to most modern tastes, completely useless. Yet it's a comic delight and an alco-literary history lesson. Keep it by the loo, not the drinks cabinet.
