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Event Description
With the wealth of sources – photographs, memoirs, recipe books, advertising – available to anyone interested in the history of food, we’re no longer confining ourselves to one great writer from each era in our study of what our ancestors grew, cooked, ate and described.
January 6th: The Edwardians
The early years of the 20th century saw the rich, with their lavish picnics, banquets and shooting parties, eating to excess, while the sufferings of the poor were documented in both fiction and non-fiction. Even the children’s literature of the time, ‘The Railway Children’ and ‘The Wind in the Willows’, tells us some revealing facts about food.
January 20th: Rations and Poetry
Although it was the Second War World that saw the early introduction of food rationing, shortages affected the Great War too, and memoirs and ‘austerity cookbooks’ began to compete with fiction to document the times – not least accounts from the trenches, and the poignant diary of Ann Frank.
February 3rd: The Jazz Age
From the 20s onwards, the young and fashion-conscious favoured everything frivolous, daring and American, including a lighter, less stodgy style of eating. Cocktails ruled, and F Scott Fitzgerald’s stories reflected the mood – as did George Orwell’s grittier accounts of life in dingy lodgings.
February 17th: Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams
Some would date the decline of British cooking, and the rise of junk food, from the post-war period, though rationing was with us until the mid 50s. Kitchen Sink drama and novels brought working class life and food to the stage and page, and cookery writers like Elizabeth David showed that food writing could be literary and even lyrical.
March 3rd: Watching Our Weight
Men and women had been figure-conscious for centuries, and history records some bizarre diets – but as affluence grew and the majority had enough to eat, the obsession with corsets and calories affected the way we thought about food. From H G Wells through Evelyn Waugh to Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones, writers have portrayed the twentieth century’s weight-watchers.
March 17th: Further Afield
‘Midnight’s Children’ is not the only Booker prizewinner to be set in India, and this reflects our growing fondness for the tastes and dishes of the subcontinent. There are fascinating stories behind the steady growth of Chinese and Italian restaurants in Britain too, and the more recent success of many other cuisines.
March 31st: Science Fiction and the Future of Food
Most depictions of food in sci-fi are pretty unappetising, from astronauts kept alive by pills to Margaret Atwood’s nightmare chickens. We’ve come a long way from the late Victorian menus of 1900 – but where do we go from here, in a world threatened by global warming, mass migration and the dominance of ultra-processed food?
- Duration: 60 mins x 7
- Online Zoom event: Join from your computer, phone or tablet (a recording will be available)
Meet the Host, Judith
Judith loved history and literature equally at school, and hated having to choose between them – but opting for an English degree led her on to further studies at the Shakespeare Institute, based then in Birmingham. Since then a career in secondary teaching has developed beyond retirement into teaching adults. Judith has given dozens of courses in the novel, poetry, social history and the history of food, and delivered popular talks on everything from Georgian cartoons to poets laureate.
"There’s so much to learn, and more and more ways to do it", says Judith. "When I find something fascinating I want to share it, and to find the best way of bringing history and literature to life. Learning and entertainment needn’t be mutually exclusive."
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