At 79, Alan Sillitoe, author of the ground-breaking 1950s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, is an unrepentant smoker. He has smoked every day since he was a 14-year-old factory boy.
With the ban on smoking in pubs in England little more than two weeks away, Sillitoe reflects on a life steeped in tobacco, and recalls an era before health concerns dominated, when it seemed "everybody smoked".
Current photographs by Phil Coomes; archive pictures from Getty; audio by Denise Winterman. Slideshow produced by Tom Housden.
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