Food and memory

As I’ve already discussed in previous posts, food and memory are inextricably bound up together.

In Lark Rise to Candleford (1945), her autobiographical account of her Oxfordshire childhood, Flora Thompson’s food memories evoke the old custom and habits of a world that has long since disappeared and the delight of being a child at this time. Continue reading “Food and memory”

Food and alienation

I said, ‘Excuse me. I will ask you something if I may. Can you perchance tell me…’ I raised my head to look upon her in the eye and asked, ‘How do you make a chip?’ (Andrea Levy, Small Island) Continue reading “Food and alienation”

Cooking for the clergy

With Covid-19 raging through nearly every country in the world right now, it would probably be appropriate for me to devote a post to ‘pandemic literature’ (perhaps Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year [1722] or Albert Camus’ The Plague [1947]). However, I suspect that, if food is referenced, it is far from tasty, and I also think that, at times like this, we might need to seek solace in a different type of literature. Continue reading “Cooking for the clergy”

Food fit for a king

In my last post I wrote about food celebrations for the Queen’s coronation in Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. This post carries on the royal theme, but with a focus on what the monarch eats. Continue reading “Food fit for a king”