It has started to feel like gin season, hasn’t it? The second Saturday of June, I’ve just discovered, is World Gin Day! The Unusual Times (Hendrick’s company blog) may have just inspired me to grab one of the dusty blank journals from my stack and curl up with a teapot full of the good stuff…

From “In Celebration of World Gin Day, Hendrick’s Presents A Survey of Gin Through the Centuries“:

We think binge drinking is bad now but for most of the first half of the 18th century most of Britain was drunk. Quite how we managed the Age of Enlightenment is a mystery. On average three gallons of gin per annum was consumed by every man, woman and child in the country… Then, as now, writers were fond of a tipple. The history of literature is, in many ways, the history of alcohol — making stories up and mixing cocktails are analogous activities. One supports and encourages the other. As the Roman poet Horace put it: “The Muses have usually smelt of drink first thing in the morning.”