Soft-shell crab with a hazelnut salad, fried oysters with a green-chile-buttermilk dressing, a gin-and-tonic salmon with a subtle juniper aroma: these were creative combinations not often seen on New York menus.

NEWYORKER: Bell Book & Candle

But Akunin, speaking over a gin-and-tonic in a London hotel bar, was perhaps about to disappoint some of his readers.

BBC: 'I'm no Havel' says campaigning Russian author Akunin

Though he encountered his share of racism--at one Friar event the chancellor's wife assumed he was a waiter and ordered him to fetch her a gin and tonic--he also had his share of opportunities.

FORBES: Renaissance Man

Standing on Fermor's terrace, with its fragments of classical sculpture and its vertiginous view of a turquoise cove of stones, I felt as if the inhabitants of 40 years ago had momentarily gone inside for a siesta and would soon be out for a dusk-lit gin and tonic.

WSJ: At Home in the World

We were eating lunch in the central tent, washing down slices of tasty wood-fired pizza with glasses of gin and tonic, when a massive, six-ton bull elephant decided to crash our party.

BBC: Zimbabwe, a side you've never seen

Spanish tapas restaurant Coqueta is offering the Oracle Cocktail (209 Gin, house-made anise tonic, elderflower, lemon, hibiscus and a splash of San Francisco fog) and a Podium Paella, made with squid ink and scallops.

BBC: Sailing fever blows into San Francisco

If, like me, you are not categorically keen on Southeast Asian beach resorts, it is probably because you have been to Thailand's Phuket or Krabi, where you sat on heel-hammered sands drinking a warm gin and tonic from a literal bucket, wishing you'd discovered the place before the invention of fire-spinning, Katy Perry and laser shows.

WSJ: The Philippines's Strange Paradise

The coffee on the way to work in the morning, the newspaper or magazine to read on the train, the sandwich and chocolate bar at lunchtime, the gin and tonic on the way home, the DVD you rent when you get home - everything.

BBC: Pile of coins