From the earliest times stories have been translated into other languages, adapted into different contexts and rewritten to suit a new place, time and readership. From Chaucer borrowing from the works of the Italian writers Boccaccio and Petrarch for many of his Canterbury Tales to Shakespeare’s plundering of historical records and ancient tales, where stories are concerned there is ‘nothing new under the sun’. Continue reading “A literary and culinary translation”
Category: 21st century fiction
The Chocolate War
Disagreements over chocolate are commonplace: some people prefer milk, some dark. Family members and friends may well argue over who gets to eat the nation’s favourite Quality Street (according to a 2021 article in the Daily Telegraph it is the purple one ) and who is lumbered with the least favourite (the orange creme according to the same article). But you wouldn’t normally expect such differences to be described as a ‘war’. Continue reading “The Chocolate War”
Food and generosity
In my last post I blogged about Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel, The Marriage Portrait, inspired by My Last Duchess by Robert Browning, a poem which I taught frequently during my career as a secondary school English teacher.
The text that inspired this post – Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird – was also one I taught frequently (as well as also studying it when I was at school). Continue reading “Food and generosity”
A Chemistry Lesson
It is not uncommon for cooking – specifically baking – to be likened to chemistry. The way that baking requires the cook to mix together ingredients in specific quantities which then combine and, through the application of heat, turn into a new product, is not dissimilar to what happens in the chemistry experiments we all participated in at school. Continue reading “A Chemistry Lesson”