A History of English Food

Clarissa Dickson Wright's major new history of English food takes the reader on a journey from the feasts of medieval kings to the cuisine u both good and bad u of the present day. She explores the types of food that people have eaten over the ages. She looks at the shifting influences on English food as the British Empire waxed and waned and new immigrant communities made their contribution to the life of the country. And she tells the stories of those who have shaped public taste u the chefs, cookery book writers, gourmets and gluttons whose lives centred on the dining table. Above all, she gives a vivid sense of what it was like to sit down to the meals of previous ages, whether an eighteenth-century labourer's breakfast or a twelve-course Victorian banquet or a frugal lunch during the Second World War. Fully illustrated throughout, and shot through with Clarissa's characteristic wit and her eye for the telling detail, this is a magnificently entertaining and hugely ambitious book about a perennially fascinating subject.