British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History
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Product Description
Product Description
This important award-winning book is recognised as the authoritative work on the subject of British food. It is a breath-taking attempt to trace the changes to and influences on food in Britain from the Black Death, through the Enclosures, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of Capitalism to the present day. There has been a recent wave of interest in food culture and history and Colin Spencer's masterful, readable account of our culinary history is a celebrated contribution to the genre. There has never been such an exciting, broad-scoped history of the food of these islands. It should remind us all of our rich past and the gastronomic importance of British cuisine.
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, 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
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
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
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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