‘He outlived four of his doctors’: David Hockney’s lifelong love of smoking – and the 2,000 cigarettes he kept at home ‘for emergencies’
David Hockney, the celebrated British artist, died this week at age 88. The Guardian article explores his lifelong love of smoking, which he defiantly maintained despite medical advice and public health regulations. It recounts how his 2025 self-portrait 'Play within a Play within a Play and Me with a Cigarette' was banned from Paris Metro advertising for glamorizing smoking, and how he kept 2,000 cigarettes at home 'for emergencies.' Hockney outlived four of his doctors who urged him to quit, and he saw smoking as a matter of personal freedom, even protesting at the Labour conference in 2005.