Saint Valentine, the patron saint of lovers, epileptics, and beekeepers (a baffling trinity if ever there was one). When I heard he met his end outside Rome’s Flaminian Gate, I immediately realised the occasion deserved a drink. How else to toast a man who lost his head for his faith, only to be posthumously roped into the commercialised carnival of hearts, chocolates, and limp roses?
For the morbidly curious, his skull can be seen in Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, tastefully adorned with flowers (because nothing says devotion quite like a cranium in a glass case).