This book uses Nottingham, a city in the East Midlands of England, as a case study to examine changing attitudes and responses to drinking and alcohol problems in the UK from the 1950s to early 2000s. Based on original research drawn from local archives and oral histories, it examines responses to drink and drink problems over time, comparing local developments with those nationally. In the 1950s pub going and drinking were viewed by city inhabitants as essential activities, just as now. Author Alan Sillitoe's Nottingham-based novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) describes Saturday night as "the best and bingiest glad-time of the week." For the majority of people, drinking and occasional drunkenness were acceptable and tolerated aspects of everyday life. However, in the 1950s, the idea of the 'alcoholic', a medical as well as moral phenomenon, surfaced in society.
The book describes how, as this view took hold in the 1960s, it became associated locally with poverty, and viewed in the extreme terms as a problem of the vagrant alcoholic. The vagrants' ever-presence in the city, coupled with their unsanitary drinking, gave the place an unwholesome look. In subsequent decades, street drinkers continued to inform the local approach and went through a number of transformations; from the hooligan/ drunken football fan of the 1980s to the young binge drinker of the late 1990s/early 2000s.

About the Author
Jane McGregor worked in the UK substance misuse treatment sector before taking up an academic post at the University of Nottingham lecturing on the subject in the mid 1990s. She currently works part time at the University, teaching and researching the topic of substance misuse and its treatment. In addition she runs a consultancy company 'Substance Misuse Solutions Ltd' with her husband Tim. In 2006 Jane won a Wellcome Trust history award to study for a PhD at the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She successfully completed her doctoral studies in 2010. She is a member of the 'Intoxicants and Intoxication in Cultural and Historical Perspective' network funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and supported by the Victoria & Albert Museum and University of Cambridge, and a member of the Association of Higher Education on Alcohol and Drugs (AHEAD).


Book Information
ISBN 9781908062857
Author J.E. McGregor
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Nottingham University Press
Publisher 5M Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 437g