Oscar Wilde wrote of his inordinate fondness for absinthe and Dorothy Parker, who was at her waspish best when she disliked something, was partial to a martini or three (at the most –by four she was famously “under the host”). Ernest Hemingway’s poison was a mojito (among others) and William Faulkner’s a mint julep, while Dylan Thomas reached straight for the whiskey. Again and again and again.

Alcohol plays a well-documented role in literary life – or at least it used to, what with liquid lunches and all-night benders that ended at the typewriter. (The clatter of those keys must have been murder with a hangover, which perhaps explains why certain authors chose to remain drunk instead.)

These days, wordsmiths tend to be a more sober bunch but their reputation for enjoying a nip of this, a flagon of that, and a vat of the other, endures. It’s hardly surprising that some of the stronger stuff has sloshed onto their pages and into their stories. Flip through classics old and new and you’ll find scenes of weepy, wanton, comical, carefree and tragic inebriation, in which beds get set alight (as in Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim), bears are tied to policemen and thrown into rivers (Tolstoy’s War and Peace), and wives sold (Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge). Children’s literature isn’t exempt either – remember when Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox led a raid on Farmer Bean’s cider cellar?