'An alcoholic is someone you dislike who drinks as much as you'

Dylan Thomas

In this lucid and empathetic exploration of drink in the lives and work of eleven writers, award-winning novelist and poet William Palmer is interested in the effect that heavy drinking had on writers, how they lived with it - and were sometimes destroyed by it - and how they described the whole private and social world of the drinker in their work.

The writers are:

Patrick Hamilton -- 'The feverish magic that alcohol can work'

Jean Rhys -- 'As soon as I sober up I start again'

Charles Jackson -- 'Delirium is a disease of the night'

Malcolm Lowry -- 'I love hell. I can't wait to go back there'

Dylan Thomas -- 'A womb with a view'

Elizabeth Bishop -- 'I will not drink'

John Cheever -- 'The singing of the bottles in the pantry'

Flann O'Brien -- 'A pint of plain is your only man'

Anthony Burgess -- 'Writing is an agony mitigated by drink'

Kingsley Amis -- 'That's an interesting fridge you have there'

Richard Yates -- The Road to Revolutionary Road

Praise for the author:

'A sense of living in a time out of place resembles no writer so much as Chekhov'
Alex Larman, Observer, of The India House

'A flawless and intelligent study of sex, politics and the abuse of power. It is both subtle and shocking: that is a rare and potent combination'
Jim Crace, of The Contract