There is a surprisingly long list of authors, poets and playwrights who liked their liquor. And there is an equally long list of how they liked their tipple. Did you know that William Faulkner liked his mint julep served in a frosted metal cup or that the Bloody Mary is reputed to be named after the great Ernest Hemingway himself? If you’re in the mood for propping up the bar, then read on.

Dylan Thomas

Whisky

Dylan Thomas and whisky are synonymous. So have yourself a glass (not 18, in the Thomas tradition) and revive the spirit of one of Wales’ most beguiling figures as you read Under Milk Wood, a sentimental grotesque of an imaginary Welsh seaside village.

Interestingly, although the Welsh poet is famously reputed to have died from alcoholism, this was probably not the case.

On the night he died, Thomas allegedly boasted that he drank 18 straight whiskies at the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich. However, it was undiagnosed pneumonia that killed the author of enduring poems on the holy innocence of childhood.

In addition to whisky, Thomas is also said to have consumed quite a lot of Budweiser beer

on his American tour. Thomas wittily gave a new meaning to the term ‘alcoholic’ as “someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do”.

Ernest Hemingway

Dry Martini

It is well known that Ernest Hemingway liked his guns

and his drink. So much so that

it inspired a book – To Have

and Have Another – about his drinking habits.

The book offers insight into how you can taste how “cool and clean” and “civilised” Frederic Henry’s martini was in A Farewell to Arms, as was a Blood Mary, a drink rumoured to be named by Hemingway himself.

The American author and Nobel Prize-winner had several go-to cocktails, but his favourite was a dry martini. His characters often drank whatever he happened to be drinking at the time. In Across the River and Into the Trees, Colonel Richard Cantwell orders a Montgomery Martini: 15 parts gin to one vermouth.

Although Hemmingway was a notorious boozer, he refrained from indulging while writing. When asked if it was true that he took a pitcher of martini to work every morning, he answered: “Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner.”

William Faulkner

Mint julep

William Faulkner kept his tipple close to his writing desk, often embarking on a drunken binge.

He even admitted: “I usually write at night. I always keep my whisky within reach so many ideas that I can’t remember in the morning pop into my head.”

This Nobel Prize-winning American author loved whisky and his favourite cocktail was mint julep. He made his by

mixing whisky – preferably bourbon – with one teaspoon of sugar, a sprig of two of crushed mint, and ice. He drank it in a frosted metal cup.

For the colder months, Faulkner sipped a hot toddy made with Heaven Hill bourbon, one tablespoon of sugar, half a drop of lemon and boiling

water. His niece, Dean Faulkner Wells, claimed her uncle

would prepare the drink in the kitchen, bring it upstairs on a silver tray and admonish his patient to drink it quickly, before it cooled off.

Tennessee Williams

The Ramos Gin Fizz

Tennessee Williams was an unshakable lover of gin. Whether it was a martini or his beloved Crescent City Classic, the Ramos Gin Fizz, Williams is remembered by many who knew him as a man who enjoyed an evening (or even early morning) drink.

People in New Orleans are reputed to drink this famous southern cocktail in honour of Williams. It contains egg, cream, lemon and lime juice, sugar, gin and a dollop of orange flower soda water.

Drink features many times in his writings. “Mendacity is a system that we live in,” declares Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. “Liquor is one way out an’ death’s the other.”

Oscar Wilde

Absinthe

Oscar Wilde was often found sipping absinthe at the Café Royal in Paris. The drink played a strong part in his creative process. Admittedly, like many of his contemporaries, the writer had a somewhat dubious relationship with the drink, for he saw it both as a social lubricant and a sort of truth serum.

Although the psychoactive effects of the drink are contested, absinthe has played a notable role in the fine art movements of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Surrealism, Modernism and Cubism and in the corresponding literary movements.

Wilde famously wrote: “After the first glass, you see things as you

wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”