Authors of their own misfortune

THE late, much-missed novelist Iain Banks would have relished weighing in on the current stooshie among published authors – a sudden increase in ‘morality clauses’ in book contracts, so that publishers can ditch writers if they behave badly.

One night in the pub, he held forth indignantly about the notion that writers should be paragons of virtue. His hero, Hunter S. Thompson, was an avid consumer of almost every kind of drug.

Dylan Thomas was a noted thief, who would repay a few days’ stay by nipping off to the pawnbrokers to exchange fur coats and the family silver for drinking money.

Charles Dickens was a rotter to his wife, but not as bad as William S. Burroughs, who shot spouse Joan Vollmer, although that was a bit of an accident.

Crime novelist Patricia Highsmith was an antiSemitic misanthrope. Jacobean author Ben Jonson killed a man in a duel.

Obviously, we should beware of canonising authors, although Banksy, pictured, was certainly a man of principle, selling his beloved car collection because he couldn’t justify the size of his carbon footprint and cutting up his passport and sending it to 10 Downing Street to protest Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war.

He did end up regretting that last one though, because he’d forgotten he was due on a tour of Australia a few

weeks later.