The Demon Drink

In the final episode of the series co-hosts Lucy Cogan and Alice Mauger look at that key period in Ireland’s history when the terrible beauty of revolutionary Ireland was about to be born. In the decades leading up to the 1916 Rising Ireland’s issues with drink were not just a medical and political problem, but increasingly a personal one: for how could a people govern a nation if they couldn't govern themselves?

On this episode co-hosts Lucy Cogan and Alice Mauger turn to the dark side, looking at representations of alcohol consumption in Gothic novels of the nineteenth century. In the age of the lunatic asylum, when the temperance movement and doctors warned against the dangers of drink, writers like Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker probed the boundaries of insanity and addiction.

This episode sees co-hosts Lucy Cogan and Alice Mauger chat about the wild excesses of the Georgian era: from raspberry whiskey to fountains flowing with wine. This was a time when Irish gentlemen gained a reputation for being drunken, duelling maniacs but was this really a fair representation? Maybe so, according to Maria Edgeworth’s scathing depiction of the Irish elite in Castle Rackrent.

On this episode co-hosts Lucy Cogan and Alice Mauger look at the representation of all things whiskey related in Irish literature. Beginning with the origins of that beloved Irish classic, "Whiskey in the Jar", the episode takes in highwaymen, whiskey as a cure-all, shebeens, and wakes.

Trailer for The Demon Drink, a new podcast from Lucy Cogan and Alice Mauger, that looks at the serious and not so serious sides of Ireland's complicated and often messy relationship with alcohol.