Sherlock Holmes stated that he could identify 140 different types of tobacco just from the ash that they left.
Let us join the ‘methuselah of memory’, Professor James Daybell, and the ‘custodian of the
chronicles’, Dr Sam Willis, as they follow the smoke signals to make almost as many links for the unexpected history of smoke. Along the way they will contemplate the intoxicating
connections of the King’s Pipe, spy-ships, public executions, gender representations and stoned negotiations, all through the smog of the history of smoke.
And if you thought the negative attitudes towards smoking was a modern occurrence, well as
James VI and I said of tobacco in 1607, ‘bee ashamed [of] this filthie noveltie, harmful to the
braine, dangerouse to the lungs’. Now there was a man ahead of his time – unless you were a
witch of course…