Up in Smoke

Posted 25 August, 2007 in Writing Life |

Not according to A. N. Wilson. It’s England’s ban on public smoking.

After “racking [his] brains” to think of a single great writer of the 17th, 18th, 19th, or 20th century who didn’t smoke, Wilson attacks the British government’s capitulation to “health fanatics” who forced the passage of a “bossy and un-English law” prohibiting lighting up in pubs and restaurants.

Tennyson, who only stopped smoking in order to eat and sleep, describes in one of his letters sitting in a pub with a friend and doing very little except “staring smokey babies” at one another.

Nowadays, this harmless experience would cost the publican £1,200, and Tennyson himself £600, while appallingly self-righteous non-smokers at neighbouring tables, rather than being pleased that they had enjoyed a glimpse of the greatest Victorian poet, would be complaining about the fumes which they chose to believe were causing them some kind of damage.

Wilson calls Beryl Bainbridge “heroic” for continuing to light up, but suspects that the anti-smoking legislation may sound the death knell of literature.

My own feeling is that so long as writers are allowed to drink, we’ll be fine. Having said that, I haven’t completed a piece of fiction since I quit the demon weed. Not that there’s a connection there, but …

(Hat tip to Panic for the link.)

1 comment to “Up in Smoke”

Claire Cameron, August 25th, 2007 at 2:33 pm:

• The death knell of smoking, and literature, might be tolerance.

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