Food & Drink

The Mermaid Tavern Club: A New Discovery

Michael Strachan introduces one of the most conspicuous members of this celebrated Jacobean drinking and dining club centred on the Mermaid Tavern in London; the eccentric ‘legstretcher’ Thomas Coryate.

Game Preservers and Poachers

Charles Chevenix Trench explains how, from the reign of William the Conqueror until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the poacher was restrained by savage penal laws.

Prohibition in Britain

Lord Kinross describes how, during the first half of the eighteenth century, gin-drinking became a serious social evil.

The Horse: England's Sacred Beast?

The English aversion to eating horse flesh, recently highlighted in a number of food scandals, dates back to the coming of Christianity, as Jordan Claridge explains.

Shakespeare the Hoarder

Alexander Lee finds a ‘lip-smacking smorgasbord of Tudor delights’ in the work of William Shakespeare.

The Herring and History

S.M. Toyne investigates how, from earliest times, the migration of the herring has exercised an important influence on the history of the peoples living around the North Sea and the Baltic.