Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother’s Ruin Became The Spirit Of London
Taking its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1714 as her starting point (when Dutch genever arrived and was rebirthed in Georgian England), Olivia Williams traces Madam Geneva’s murky lifespan, in a book that’s as much a social history of London as it is of tonic’s perfect partner.
Over 300 years, the juniper-flavoured spirit went from having a vice-like grip on London’s lower classes – fuelling decades of mayhem wherein the horrifying origins of her mother’s ruin moniker lie – to being a cocktail recipe regular in the up-market bars and hipster haunts of today.
