MILK OF PARADISE: 
A History of Opium 

with Lucy Inglis

Wednesday 19th June 2019
Doors open at 6:30 pm, Talk commences at 7:00 pm 

The Century Club
61-63 Shaftesbury Ave.
Soho, London W1D 6LQ

Poppy tears, opium, heroin, fentanyl: humankind has been in thrall to the ‘Milk of Paradise’ for millennia. The latex of papaver somniferum is a bringer of sleep, of pleasurable lethargy, of relief from pain – and hugely addictive.

In this talk, acclaimed cultural historian Lucy Inglis takes us on an epic journey from ancient Mesopotamia to modern America and Afghanistan, from Sanskrit to pop, from poppy tears to smack, from morphine to today’s synthetic opiates. It is a tale of addiction, trade, crime, sex, war, literature, medicine and, above all, money.

Lucy Inglis
Lucy Inglis is a historian and novelist, a speaker, and occasionally a television presenter and voice in the radio. She is the creator of the Georgian London blog and her book of the same name was shortlisted for the History Today Longman Prize. City of Halves, her first novel for young adults, was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Branford Boase award and her second Crow Mountain was published in 2015.