The home of hungry readers
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”
Whilst I’m no fervent royalist, some of my fondest memories as a child are of royal occasions. I was seven on the celebration of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, and I remember the party that took place in the street we lived on in Bristol. The children – and possibly the adults too – dressed in red, white and blue, and my best friend Claire and I wore red, white and blue striped ribbons in our hair. There was music and games, and when evening fell the children were packed off to bed whilst the adults continued partying and dancing in the street until the early hours of the morning. Continue reading “Royal Celebrations”
Since I started this blog more than five years ago, I’ve discovered how much literature can tell us about the food preferences and practices of a particular society or culture. Continue reading “Food in the historical novel”
‘What happened to you?’ Maurice said to Ursula one afternoon as he sprawled on a deckchair on the lawn reading Punch, cramming nearly an entire slice of Mrs Glover’s marmalade cake into his mouth at once.
‘What do you mean what happened to me?’
‘You’ve turned into a heifer.’ (May 1926, page 230)
In these posts on food in Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Mrs Glover’s cooking has been presented as often falling short of expectations. Her Sole Veronique – discussed here – is described as a ‘surprisingly capricious interpretation‘ of the classic French dish whilst her Veal cutlets a la Russe – from my last post – are dismissed as ‘unappetizing‘ and ‘like the dog’s dinner‘. Clearly sophisticated continental cooking is not her forte. Continue reading “Life after Life 7: Marmalade Cake”