James Walton

MPs and DTs

Order! Order!, Ben Wright's history of political drinking, seems surprisingly unsure

issue 09 July 2016

  • Order, Order! The Rise and Fall of Political Drinking

    Ben Wright

    Duckworth Overlook, pp. 361

In 1964, a newly elected Labour MP was put in charge of the House of Commons kitchen committee. (An unpromising start to a review, I appreciate, but bear with me.) His idea of selling off the House’s rather splendid wine cellar duly appalled some MPs, but was accepted as a useful money-making scheme.

GIF Image

Disagree with half of it, enjoy reading all of it

TRY A MONTH FREE
Our magazine articles are for subscribers only. Try a month of Britain’s best writing, absolutely free.

Read next

Trending

Ameer Kotecha

The Lord of the Rings gave me my moral compass

From Spectator Life
In a recent diary for The Spectator, the editor noted that many of the world’s leading tech companies have names inspired by The Lord of the Rings: Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Mithril; Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. ‘J.R.R. Tolkien has a curious hold on the minds of Silicon Valley’s Trump supporters,’ he wrote. Well, they’re not the

More on nigel farage

Also by James Walton

Latest

Comments

Join the debate, free for a month

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first month free.

Already a subscriber? Log in