Happy New Year – and have a drink! That’s the message from the new year issue of The Spectator, where Leah McLaren has written a superb piece answering the Liam Donaldsons of this world. Here she is, in full flow:
“Almost all of this country’s most famous names been unapologetic boozers. From Kate Moss to Francis Bacon to Christopher Hitchens to the Queen Mum, Brits have a great tradition of not letting their functional alcoholism drag them down. Without it, arguably, we would not have punk rock, romantic poetry or basic democratic freedoms — for as Churchill urged us to remember, he ‘took more out of alcohol’ than alcohol took out of him.
If prohibition was instituted in this country tomorrow, dancefloors would empty out, small talk would be replaced by awkward silence and the birth rate would plummet. Even more alarmingly, ratings for the X-Factor would dry up (who could bear to watch it sober?), Lily Allen would stop tweeting, Tracey Emin would make her bed and Amy Winehouse would have nothing to write songs about.
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