Friday, 30 December 2016

Cease your blasphemy

The death of his father was announced to one of the monks: ‘Cease your blasphemy,’ said he to the person that told him; ‘my father is immortal.’

Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History IV.23.51

Thursday, 8 December 2016

When he arrived at Cambridge University he took 2,000 bottles of port with him

The prize for the rowdiest port drinker goes to a Shropshire squire called John Mytton who drank between four and six bottles of port a day. he was thought to have been permanently drunk for most of his adult life. He once set fire to his nightshirt in order to cure hiccups. When he arrived at Cambridge University he took 2,000 bottles of port with him. He left without any port or a degree. Briefly MP for Shrewsbury, he was more famous for his drunken exploits. Mytton's biographer, Charles James Apperley, wrote: "He once rode this bear into his drawing-room, in full hunting costume, The bear carried him very quietly for a time; but on being pricked by the spur he bit his rider through the calf of his leg." Mytton died aged 37, his enormous inheritance nearly spent (on port).

H. Jeffreys, Empire of Booze (2016), 44