In my last post I wrote about the use of food for diplomatic purposes in The Mirror and the Light, the final volume in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy. Continue reading “Food for a queen”
Tag: bread
Food and the crime novel
I love a good crime novel. Whether it be the detailed recounting of the evidence that leads Sherlock Holmes to his identification of the villain; the list of suspects in an Agatha Christie novel who all have a motive for committing the crime or the dark criminal underbelly of John Rebus’s Edinburgh in Ian Rankin’s contemporary fiction, crime novels have been a staple of my reading since my teenage years. Continue reading “Food and the crime novel”
Force feeding
‘Gordon,’ she said, ‘a cake.’
He shook his head and said softly, as if soothing her, ‘Oh, no, no.’
‘Yes, Gordon. It is full of goodness.’ And she made him eat a Chester cake…
(Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
If you’re anything like me, then the idea of being ‘forced’ to eat cake – with the justification that ‘it is full of goodness’- is a very appealing one! In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that is exactly what happens. Continue reading “Force feeding”
Food in Dystopia
So often when food appears in literature, it is designed to appeal to the reader’s senses – to sound delicious, to whet our appetites. Continue reading “Food in Dystopia”