He drinks, to the point of short-term amnesia and ‘hypnagogic jactitation’ – wakeful hallucinations. His body grumbles with rheumatic ticks and pains that trigger fears of a growing cancer within him. Maurice Allington, patron of the eponymous pub in Kingsley Amis’ The Green Man (1969), is like most of Amis’ protagonists only faintly distinguishable from the author: self-centred, irascible, neurotic. Whether pagan relic or Christian innovation, one thing is for certain: in the eco-conscious, semi-spiritual 21st century, the bearded man of nature is here to stay. Debate still rages to this day regarding the origins of the mysterious Green Man.
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