Why do some writers destroy themselves by drinking alcohol? Before our somewhat more health-conscious age, it would be true to say that many writers quietly drank what we now regard as excessive amounts. Here, poet and novelist William Palmer examines 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. Following a trail through the lives of otherwise dissimilar authors, Palmer profiles such figures as Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, John Cheever, Flann O'Brien, Jean Rhys, Anthony Burgess, and Kingsley Amis.