In August 2018 the well-known chef-proprietor of Brunswick House and Orasay, Jackson Boxer, faced a stark choice. “I was increasingly losing sight of any idea that I could ever be happy. I think I’d come to expect that I was by nature an extreme, self-destructive and unhappy person and that was my lot.” He was drinking heavily and taking drugs. The long hours spent in the kitchens of his restaurants took their toll. “Sometimes I’d find myself still going in the morning,” he says. When he was young he had the stamina to keep up with it. Until he didn’t. “The young people who work for me aren’t nearly as self-destructive as I was.” So he took the decision to change his life and become sober.
Boxer exemplifies a step-change in the life of a city which has long been in love with alcohol. Hogarth looms large in London. Walk any street from Notting Hill to Shoreditch on a Saturday and you will find pubs pullulating with people. It is almost our national sport. And it’s a sport we play badly.
