The Dedalus Book of Gin

Beginning in seventeenth-century, Holland, with the creation of medicinal ‘genievre’, this book follows the global adventures of gin over four dark, decadent centuries of consumption and excess. For Restoration rakes gin was a modish and exotic commodity, but its enemies – from William Hogarth via Charles Dickens to the pioneers of Prohibition – portrayed it as a handmaiden of urban squalor, cultural degeneration and melodramatic poverty. But gin has always enjoyed multiple lives, and its aromatic mystique has helped to carry its influence around the world. As a way of making the daily dose of bitter, anti-malarial quinine more palatable, planters and bureaucrats.

For early twenty-first century connoisseurs, gin has come full circle: once a rich man’s drink, then a poor man’s drink, it is once again in vogue, and an appendix provides tasting notes on the bewildering range of boutique gins now available. From the tyranny of ‘Madame Geneva’ to the doomed romance of Casablanca, this is a cultural history with a twist.

About the Author

Richard Barnett studied medicine in London before becoming a historian. He has taught at the universities of London and Cambridge, and was a judge for the inaugural Wellcome Trust Book Prize in 2009. His first book, Medical London: City of Diseases, City of Cures, written with Mike Jay, was published in 2008, and was chosen as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4.