Writers and Whisky: What the Record Shows

After supper at Inveraray on Saturday 23 October 1773, Samuel Johnson called for “a gill of whisky”. His explanation, recorded by James Boswell, was disarmingly direct: “let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman happy!”[1]

That encounter survives through an eyewitness. Other literary whisky stories have shakier foundations. William Faulkner’s published interview gives us his own words; the saying attributed to Mark Twain and Dylan Thomas’s reported “eighteen straight whiskies” demand different verdicts.[7][8][9][10] The pleasure is in following each story back to its source: sometimes a poem, sometimes a conversation, sometimes a wreck with thousands of bottles aboard.

Writers and whisky: start with the evidence

A witnessed encounter, an interview and a fictional character’s preferences tell different stories. Boswell describes something he saw Johnson do. Faulkner speaks for himself. The whiskies in James Bond’s adventures belong first to Bond, not automatically to Ian Fleming.[1][10][11]

A memorable sentence can travel further than its source. What matters is whether the association rests on a contemporary account, the writer’s own words, a literary work or a later retelling. These records are interesting enough without making alcohol an explanation for literary achievement.

Johnson: a companion saves the last drop

Boswell had not previously seen Johnson “taste any fermented liquor during all our travels”. At Inveraray, Johnson drank all but a drop of his whisky. Boswell poured that last drop into his own glass so that he could say they had drunk whisky together.[1]

There was a small negotiation over the toast. Johnson would not toast Mrs Thrale in whisky, so they toasted “some insular lady” instead.[1]

Claim: Johnson requested and drank whisky at Inveraray in 1773.
Verdict: Documented
What the record shows: Boswell witnessed the encounter and recorded it in his journal. The account establishes this occasion, not a general drinking habit.[1]

Burns: praise, privilege and the exciseman

Robert Burns’s lament, “Thee, Ferintosh! O sadly lost!”, had a specific grievance behind it. As the National Trust for Scotland explains, Scotch Drink responds to a 1784 Act ending the Forbes family of Culloden’s right to distil Ferintosh whisky free of duty. Its praise of whisky is political as well as poetic.[2]

The poem appeared in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, printed by John Wilson in Kilmarnock in 1786. The National Library of Scotland describes that edition as “the first collection of Burns’s work to appear in print”. Here, the connection between writer and whisky is on the printed page.[3]

Burns’s later employment adds another turn. According to the Scotch Whisky Association, he spent the last few years of his life as an exciseman, gauging distilleries for tax and stopping illicit distilling. A few years after starting that work, he wrote The Deil’s Awa Wi’ The Exciseman.[4]

Claim: Burns’s Scotch Drink laments the loss of the Ferintosh privilege.
Verdict: Documented
What the record shows: The poem responds to the 1784 Act and appeared in print in 1786.[2][3]

Claim: Burns praised whisky and later worked as an exciseman.
Verdict: Documented
What the record shows: The poem was printed in 1786. Burns later gauged distilleries for tax and stopped illicit distilling; the supplied sources do not reliably establish his exact years of excise service.[2][3][4]

Nor should these records be turned into a claim that Burns drank himself to death: the National Trust for Scotland says there is “little evidence that he regularly drank to excess”.[2] His poem and his work offer a richer portrait than that familiar caricature.

Mackenzie: the wreck behind Whisky Galore

About 24,000 bottles of whisky were salvaged by islanders after the SS Politician was wrecked off Eriskay, according to Historic Environment Scotland.[5] The ship had sailed from Liverpool towards New York and came to grief in gales on 5 February 1941. Its story became the basis for Compton Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore.[5][6]

Mackenzie had lived at Suidheachan, Northbay, Barra, from 1934 and used the island as his background. His fictional islands are Great and Little Todday. The 50,000 bottles carried by his fictional ship, the SS Cabinet Minister, are its cargo, distinct from the roughly 24,000 bottles salvaged from the real wreck.[5]

The real aftermath included prison sentences. On 11 August 1941, The Scotsman ran “Whisky from Wreck: Secret That Could Not Be Kept”. Its later account records cases at Lochmaddy Sheriff Court in which several crofters received sentences of up to two months for excise offences.[6]

The Ealing film Whisky Galore!, directed by Alexander Mackendrick, opened in UK cinemas on 16 June 1949. Filmed on Barra, it used islanders as extras and featured Mackenzie as Captain Buncher. In December that year it opened in the United States as Tight Little Island; its French title was Whisky à Gogo.[5]

Claim: Whisky Galore draws on the wreck of the SS Politician off Eriskay.
Verdict: Documented
What the record shows: The February 1941 wreck became the basis for Mackenzie’s fiction. The precise grounding spot remains disputed.[5][6]

The sources also disagree on the book’s publication year: Historic Environment Scotland gives 1946, while The Scotsman gives 1947.[5][6]

Claim: Crofters buried bottles beneath oats and men wore their wives’ dresses to protect their clothes from oil.
Verdict: Legend
What the record shows: The Scotsman reports both stories without naming a witness for either.[6]

Faulkner and Thompson: follow the quotation back

“Paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey”: William Faulkner’s list of tools comes from an identifiable conversation. Jean Stein interviewed him in New York in early 1956 for The Paris Review, issue 12, published that spring.[10]

Stein asked whether he meant bourbon. Faulkner replied that he was not particular and would take Scotch over nothing.[10]

Claim: Faulkner included “a little whiskey” in a list of his tools.
Verdict: Documented
What the record shows: He gave that answer in his interview with Jean Stein. The exchange does not establish a required writing routine or any benefit from drinking.[10]

Where Faulkner’s words lead back to an identifiable interview, Hunter S. Thompson’s recollection reaches us through an indirect source. Difford’s Guide reports his recollection of drinking Wild Turkey for about fifteen years before switching to Chivas Regal. It is trade reporting of that recollection, with no original interview identified.[12]

Claim: Thompson drank Wild Turkey “like some sort of sacrament”.
Verdict: Legend
What the record shows: Difford’s Guide presents the description as his recollection but identifies no interview or publication behind the wording.[12]

Dylan Thomas: the boast and the recorded cause of death

Dylan Thomas arrived in the United States on 19 October 1953 for his final tour, which included the first readings of Under Milk Wood. The BBC’s historical account says he was already ill on arrival, with blackouts and breathing problems. He died at St Vincent’s Hospital, New York, on 9 November, aged 39.[8]

Claim: Thomas boasted that he had consumed eighteen straight whiskies.
Verdict: Disputed
What the record shows: The BBC calls the reported boast highly unlikely. The Irish Times cites a 2004 biography arguing that he could not have consumed more than eight. The larger number is not an established tally, and the biography’s title and author are not reliably established in the supplied sources.[8][9]

More decisively, the official cause was given as “a swelling of the brain caused by pneumonia and poor oxygen supply”.[8] “He died from eighteen whiskies” therefore substitutes a disputed anecdote for the recorded explanation. Thomas’s death should not be reduced to a drinking feat, or presented as the inevitable ending of a poet’s life.

Two familiar mistakes: Twain and Bond

The earliest known use of “whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over” found by Quote Investigator dates to 1983, without Mark Twain’s name. Twain died in 1910. The familiar attribution lacks substantive support, however comfortably the line seems to sit beneath his name.[7]

Bond’s whisky story is a matter of separating books from films, and character from author. The Telegraph’s survey reports that Scotch is more prevalent than the martini in Fleming’s novels. Its examples include “Haig and Haig on the rocks” and Old Grand-Dad bourbon in Live and Let Die, with other named whiskies elsewhere in the books.[11]

The report also distinguishes the Macallan appearance in Skyfall from Fleming’s literary Bond.[11] These brand references come through trade reporting, rather than a fresh check of the novels. They offer a useful correction to Bond’s popular image. But Bond’s glass belongs to Bond: a character’s taste is not an author’s drinking record.

Sources

1. Undiscovered Scotland, reproducing James Boswell. The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: 12. Oban to Inveraray. https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usebooks/boswell-hebrides/12-oban-inveraray.html
2. National Trust for Scotland. Scotch Drink. https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/scotch-drink
3. National Library of Scotland. Rare books by / about Robert Burns. https://digital.nls.uk/robert-burns/books/
4. Scotch Whisky Association. Who is Robert Burns and what is his connection to Scotch Whisky? https://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/discover-scotch/story-of-scotch/burns-night/
5. Historic Environment Scotland. Whisky Galore: The story of a close-knit community. https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2022/06/whisky-galore/
6. The Scotsman. On this day 1941: SS Politician sinks unleashing ‘Whisky Galore’. https://www.scotsman.com/regions/inverness-highlands-and-islands/on-this-day-1941-ss-politician-sinks-unleashing-whisky-galore-141303
7. Quote Investigator. Quote Origin: Whiskey Is for Drinking; Water Is for Fighting Over. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/06/03/whiskey-water/
8. BBC Wales History blog. The death of Dylan Thomas. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/waleshistory/2011/11/the_death_of_dylan_thomas.html
9. The Irish Times, Frank McNally. A poet’s last stand: Frank McNally on the death of Dylan Thomas, 70 years ago. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irish-diary/2023/11/08/a-poets-last-stand-frank-mcnally-on-the-death-of-dylan-thomas-70-years-ago/
10. The Paris Review, Jean Stein. William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/the-art-of-fiction-no-12-william-faulkner
11. The Telegraph. Shaken and stirred: what James Bond really drinks. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/11294189/Shaken-and-stirred-what-James-Bond-really-drinks.html
12. Difford’s Guide. Hunter S. Thompson. https://www.diffordsguide.com/encyclopedia/2874/people/hunter-s-thompson

This desk-researched article uses the supplied verified fact sheet, distinguishing eyewitness writing, interviews, literary texts and later reporting.

Last checked: November 2026