Letters: Jesus was a wine connoisseur 

Benefits of abstinence

Sir: In last week’s Spectator, I turned to the cover piece ‘Dry Britain’ first because I stopped drinking alcohol last January. However, contrary to the demographic expectations of your article, I am a not-young 58-year-old. My abstinence is not based on a moral position, nor fear of an appearance on TikTok, but on the fact that three people I knew of my age and younger sadly passed away in the past year. One was directly due to the effects of alcohol, and in the other two cases alcohol was a likely factor. A year ago I was relatively fit, healthy and slim in comparison to the majority of my peers but still, as I peered at the horizon, I could make out a grim-looking gent with a scythe. Although I have also changed my eating and exercise habits, I can still identify the significant benefits, both physical and mental, that not drinking has delivered. Winston Churchill said: ‘I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me.’ For once, I have to disagree with him: alcohol will definitely take more out of you than you will take from it.

James Gardiner

Derby

Greater solace

Sir: Again Bruce Anderson bemoans his inability to believe in God, and turns to the solace of good wine (Drink, 20 January). But, despite his gloomy suggestion, Christian faith does not depend on anything so abstract as ‘a meaning to life and a fear of death’. It depends on Jesus. Jesus seems to have approved of excellent wine, as in the second chapter of John’s gospel. What’s to stop Bruce from starting there and searching for the still greater solace which the rest of that book might offer?

The Rt Revd Prof N.T. Wright
(former bishop of Durham)

Wycliffe Hall, Oxford

Plucky forbears

Sir: Professor Abulafia’s article (‘Sea worthy’, 20 January) is most welcome to every historian, especially those whose interest is in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.