Re: Snow Was: Smoking. Was: Clarke Award Finalists 2001

On 6/26/25 12:32, William Hyde wrote:

Paul S Person wrote:

On Thu, 26 Jun 2025 09:16:17 +0100, Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:
>

On 24/06/2025 07:16, Titus G wrote:

On 20/06/25 14:38, Titus G wrote:

On 20/06/25 09:27, William Hyde wrote:

Titus G wrote:

snip

Vengeance was the fifth of his Quirke series. Copyright 2012. As well as
constant cigarette references, specific English brand names were used.

>

Just in case I did not previously recommend Banville's "Snow", let me do
so now.  It is a mystery, but not involving Quirke.

>
In Chapter 1, Senior Service cigarettes are smoked and later on the
Priest smoked Churchmans cigarettes which will be English or Irish
brands. In Chapter 3, the body is sent to pathologist Quirke, an in joke
as there is no further reference.
I really enjoy his prose. Thank you for the recommendation.

>
By the way, Churchman was a real cigarette
brand which doesn't appear to have religious
meaning, Wikipedia says that William Churchman's
pipe tobacco shop was opened in 1790.

>
Are you sure his name did not come from an ancestor being ... a Church
man? Just like "Smith" or "Miller" (among others).

 Usually the name came from people who worked for the church but were not ordained, sextons, vergers, and so on.  At the time the name arose clerics were Catholic, and thus did not acknowledge their children.

But when the monasteries were dissolved there were a lot of former churchmen
running around without last names, places to live or even work because prayer was
no longer a job. The literate could find work of course being able to read and write
when these were more rare skills. Lots of people became whoever "priest" or even
"Priestly".

 

>

Also from Wikipedia, Senior Service was
an expensive filterless cigarette brand
launched in 1925.  "Senior Service" also
is a colloquial name of the British Navy.
I'm assuming that this name is older than
the cigarettes.

>
Very likely. Cigs for tars, how nice.

Tars for tars.

 The ads were more about officer-class types, officer class being in those early days always upper class as well.

Well of course they were upper class in most nations as why would
entrust a peasant with an expensive ship and crew.
Education was not evenly distributed then or now.

 William Hyde

bliss