After 1100 English cooking reached a high degree of gastronomy, which it shared internationally with the courts of Europe. Medieval food was stylish and tasteful, it was food designed to please and satisfy very sophisticated palates and right up to the mid 19th century it had epochs and phases of greatness. So how did we throw all that away? And not only throw it all away but forget all about it? This book attempts to trace the changes and influences of food in Britain through the Black Death, the Enclosures, the Reformation, the rise of Capitalism and the sado-masochism of the Victorian non-conformists to the present day. It should remind us all of our rich past and the gastronomic importance of the cuisine of these islands.
British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History
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About the Author
Colin Spencer is one of the country's leading food historians but his prolific output has not been limited to this field alone. He has written nine novels, a dozen cookery books, has six plays produced, as well as writing for television and film. For thirteen years he was food columnist for The Guardian.
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First Sentence
Our food begins with the earth. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Our food begins with the earth. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is a suprisingly comprehensive and coherent discourse on the foods of the British isles, with interesting information from a wide range of disciplines - including analysis of the diet of the Serf, society gossip columns and legal statutes about food and food production through the ages. The author's style is very accessible, and the book is only let down by the fact that it contains quite a lot of typographical errors.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By prettyinpink
Format:Hardcover
This should be a definitive work but actually it is a big let down and seriously not worth the money.
Without doubt this is badly written and even more badly edited, if it ever was edited. There are for example whole sentences and indeed paragraphs duplicated and printed hundreds of pages apart.
A seriously sloppy piece of work; reminds me of a student dissertation in progress.
Without doubt this is badly written and even more badly edited, if it ever was edited. There are for example whole sentences and indeed paragraphs duplicated and printed hundreds of pages apart.
A seriously sloppy piece of work; reminds me of a student dissertation in progress.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Booksie
Format:Hardcover
I was looking forward to chomping down this 'comprehensive' history of British food as a reader with an avid interest in historical Britain, and as previously critiqued, Spencer is shockingly sloppy with his English - he lacks any system of logical organisation - but my main 'beef' with this award-winning piece is his research. I simply cannot trust what he says (the end footnotes are permanently bookmarked, one simply cannot stop checking his sources).
He relies heavily on select sources and fails to appreciate the wider arguments. How this won a prestigious award I cannot fathom. You're suspicious from the start, I only had to peruse the Appendices to find a list of national 'dishes'. I do not see how listing, for example, a load of vegetables constitutes a 'dish' (see respective sub-heading). As far as I'm aware, a leek is a leek, it's not quite a culinary dish put together with some craft. This endless rehashing of ingredients available continues in the main, entire paragraphs resemble shopping lists, and it's grating. The first chapter is like an ode to his mainstay source, Aelfric's Colloquy, you may as well go read the original and consider the contemporary evidence. I had to put it down.
As noted, this is an amateur work, not even to a dissertation standard.
Very disappointing, and it never fails to amaze me how shoddy the standards are of some publishers for they'll still publish any old manuscript-in-working without endless polishing. This needs some desperate work, and I dare say, I could do a better job. I daresay, you yourself, could do a better job.
He relies heavily on select sources and fails to appreciate the wider arguments. How this won a prestigious award I cannot fathom. You're suspicious from the start, I only had to peruse the Appendices to find a list of national 'dishes'. I do not see how listing, for example, a load of vegetables constitutes a 'dish' (see respective sub-heading). As far as I'm aware, a leek is a leek, it's not quite a culinary dish put together with some craft. This endless rehashing of ingredients available continues in the main, entire paragraphs resemble shopping lists, and it's grating. The first chapter is like an ode to his mainstay source, Aelfric's Colloquy, you may as well go read the original and consider the contemporary evidence. I had to put it down.
As noted, this is an amateur work, not even to a dissertation standard.
Very disappointing, and it never fails to amaze me how shoddy the standards are of some publishers for they'll still publish any old manuscript-in-working without endless polishing. This needs some desperate work, and I dare say, I could do a better job. I daresay, you yourself, could do a better job.
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