The Englishman's Food

Jan 10, 2025 5:20 PM

Author:J.C. Drummond,Anne Wilbraham

Medieval gardens; cookshops; spices; ale, beer, wine and spirits; the food of peasants, labourers, townspeople, the wealthy, the poor and the country gentleman; fish, meat and game; the feeding of infants, children; dairy products; vitamins, proteins, fat and fibre; the adulteration of food; the four bottle man; bread; poaching; tea, coffee and chocolate; food in schools and institutions; sugar and sweetmeats; root crops; the agricultural revolution; the importance of 'white meats', the vegetarian diet; menus and recipes. . .

The Englishman's Food was first published in 1939, fully revised in 1957 and now appears with a new updating introduction. A ground-breaking book, it is a fascinating and authoritative survey of food production, consumption, fashions and follies over a period of five hundred years.

Reprinted with a new introduction by food editor Tom Jaine.

Reviews

The achievement of this pioneering book is very great. It remains a remarkable contribution to the study of eating habits and health in society

—— Derek Cooper

The most valuable contribution of its kind

—— Guardian

This fascinating book should be read from cover to cover

—— Daily Telegraph

A tour de force

—— Observer

To read it is a pleasure as well as a duty; learned and well-written, it is a mine of curious information

—— New Statesman

Sarah Wise is too clever and considered a historian simply to give us a lurid, one-dimensional Victorian melodrama. Through painstaking archival work and readable empathetic prose, she has instead sought to evoke the texture of life here

—— Daily Telegraph

The account is both moving and engrossing, and its tendency in places to become a litany of misery and despair is redeemed by Sarah Wise's light and occasionally humorous touch

—— Literary Review

As with her previous book The Italian Boy, Sarah Wise is superb on statistical detail... In every respect this is a note-perfect work of social history, thoroughly researched, charitable in its sympathies, and sadly still embodying lessons for today

—— Independent

Carefully researched... a wide-ranging study

—— Sunday Telegraph

Her achievement is remarkable... This engrossing work shines a light not only on a turbulent period in London's history, but on humanity itself. Only the best histories can claim as much

—— Guardian

Spilling facts, lives, conditions, intolerable burdens and the spirit expressed by spontaneous dancing in the streets, The Blackest Streets is a little masterpiece

—— Herald

Extraordinary scholarship and rare sensitivity

—— Ophelia Field , Daily Telegraph

Sarah Wise mines the archives to bring the local inhabitants back to life, and makes particularly brilliant use of the interviews that historian Raphael Samuel conducted in the 1970s with Arthur Harding.

—— LRB

As in her wonderful book The Italian Boy, she explores a milieu that was hungry, dirty, threadbare and exploited

—— Christopher Hirst , The Independent

Sarah Wise animates the horrors in fascinating detail

—— Toby Clements , The Telegraph

Reveals the London beneath your feet in all its fascinating – and sometimes horrifying – glory. Historian and novelist Ackroyd invests his tales of buried rivers and catacombs with enormous energy

—— ELLE Decoration

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