Announcing the winner of this year's Samuel Johnson Prize, Andrew Marr was pleased to be able to say that none of the shortlisted books was the obvious result of a publisher's 'wheeze', or the so-called biography of something which couldn't in all honesty be said ever to have had a life. One of the more glaring recent additions to the latter category is Cocaine: An Unauthorised Biography by Dominic Streatfeild (Virgin, £20). How, even supposing a 'biography' of the drug is possible, would you set about getting it authorised? Who would you ask? George W. - 'W' in this instance standing for 'When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible' - Bush? Or perhaps the Queen, within yards of whom, the Evening Standard was shocked to report, other representatives of the supra-legal idle rich were snorting the stuff in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.

LRB 5 July 2001 | PDF Download