In the 1920s the pattern of mealtimes began to change. Before the First World War, the evening meal in middle-class households was a highly elaborate, formal affair in which many courses were served. The subsequent generation tended to favour a more simplified ritual with fewer courses, starting later in the evening. The cocktail hour was born! Cocktails were an American invention. They assumed widespread popularity, particularly during the era of Prohibition (1919–33). Cocktails could conveniently disguise the appearance of alcohol. But Prohibition failed to stop America drinking. As Gatsby, a character in Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925), amply demonstrates, the rich never went thirsty. Organised crime saw to that. At Christmas 1933, after Prohibition was finally repealed, almost every middle-class household in America witnessed one spouse giving the other a cocktail shaker.

In Great Britain, cocktails became particularly fashionable when the Savoy Hotel opened its American Cocktail Bar in 1929. This was under the management of Harry Craddock, a legendary New York bar tender who had found it difficult to get legitimate work. One year later, Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book was published. It has since become the bible of the British cocktail trade. All the major West End retailers in luxury goods sold distinctive cocktail shakers. In their Christmas catalogue for 1933, Asprey’s advertised three novelty cocktail shakers. One in silver in the shape of a ship’s bell was on sale for the considerable sum of £25.