Book review: Alcohol and Moral Regulation: Public Attitudes, Spirited Measures and Victorian Hangovers. By Henry Yeomans (Policy Press, 2014, 279+vii pp., £70)

[First paragraph] Anyone with an interest in Britain’s relationship with alcohol will have been hard pressed not to notice recurrent news reports over the last decade about binge-drinking, city centre ‘no-go’ areas and the pressure that alcohol-related injuries and illnesses place on the NHS. Particularly following the passage of the Licensing Act 2003, some such reports feared that ‘Booze Britain’ would embrace 24-hour drinking, leading to cataclysmic deteriorations in public order, public health and public decency. But even when this bacchanalian orgy failed to materialize, public discussions of alcohol consumption continued to be framed in often alarmist, or at least anxious, terms. In this wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study, Henry Yeomans sets out to confront the idea that there is a clear-cut relationship between alcohol-related problems in society and levels of public concern about consumption. Moreover, he makes a convincing case that such marked anxiety about drinking is actually quite distinctive to Britain, as compared to other European countries, and that this ultimately has its roots in Britain’s 19th-century history of temperance.