Patrick Dillon: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva

By MARGIE THOMSON

Luckily, history is a sustainable resource: no matter how thoroughly we mine it there's always something left. Better still, every generation that comes along sees events through the lens of their own time's concerns.

So Dillon has been able to discover a really fascinating character lurking in the mists of the 18th century - the infamous Madam Geneva, whom we know better under her shortened form, "Gin" - and has found a parallel with her in our own period.

What could have been just a rather thorough history of an 18th-century drug craze, the people who made it, those who used and abused it, and those who tried to prohibit it, becomes also a spotlight on today's ineffectual and probably futile war on drugs.

Mostly, he stays within range of the birth of the English gin-distilling industry in 1690, complete with tax breaks, and no regulation. "Within 30 years London was floating in a lake of gin," Dillon remarks, "leaving a trail of broken hearts and ruined families, of crime and violence ... We think we've got problems with modern drugs: it hardly compares with the drugs of yesteryear." A fascinating history, told in a lively, lucid style.

Review

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