Food & Drink

Richard Almond describes how some rare wall paintings help shed light on medieval hunting.

The quest for spiritual virtue through personal austerity drove many Eastern Christians to lead solitary lives as hermits surviving in the wilderness. Andrew Jotischky describes how indifference to food became an integral part of the monastic ideal in the Byzantine era, one revived in the West in the 11th and 12th centuries.

While industrialists in Manchester were busily engaged in developing the factory system, investors in London were applying its principles to the capital’s old pubs. The result was a coldly efficient business model. Jessica Warner explains how it worked and why it failed.

The English diet has been mythologised as one of roasted meats and few vegetables but, as Anita Guerrini concludes from a survey of early modern writings on the subject, the nation’s approach to food has been rather more complicated than that.

Plant-based diets high in carbohydrates made the Roman ‘barley men’ appear more spectacular.

Nick Cullather explains how the scientific discovery of the calorie meant food values could be quantified – and the US could make food an instrument of foreign policy.

The Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, later to be known as Kellogg's, was founded on February 19th, 1906.

Alison Barnes has unearthed a transcription of the Privy Purse Accounts of Charles II that fills the gap for 1666, for which year the originals are now lost. They offer a fascinating glimpse of how the King liked to spend his time and his money.

Andy Lynes experiences a colourful and tasty vocation lesson in the history of the Regency period.

Jamie Oliver is the latest in a long line of food reformers. John Burnett looks at the campaign of the Reform Bread League to improve the nation’s loaf.