The book suggests a much more varied, rich, and bizarre English cuisine than the stereotype allows, listing native plants and garden plants that were once widely consumed but now are forgotten (e. The Historic Royal Palaces curator Lucy Worsley presented a BBC film, 'Food in England', The Lost World of Dorothy Hartley, on 6 November 2015. With Dorothy’s biographer, Adrian Bailey, I examined letters from a few years she spent travelling in Africa, and learned the tantalizing story of her great lost love, the heavy-drinking bush ranger whom she later said she should have married. For example, chapter V, Meat, discusses "a rather interesting mediaeval miracle" and illustrates a traditional "Colonial Travelling Meat Safe of Mosquito Net".

Finally ‘Food in England’ came to fruition in the home she inherited from her mother in the Welsh village of Fron, outside Llangollen.

This book ought to be required reading for every Englishman (and woman), every tourist to England, every Ambassador, visiting Head of State, postgraduate student, et al. But whether mad or not, Hartley "approaches the cuisine of the past with the humour and sharpness of a journalist.

The instructions are given in a few paragraphs: "Let the sirloin be well hung; dust it lightly with dry mustard, pepper and brown flour to give a crisp crust; bed the fat end well under the lean undercut, and secure in place with string or carefully placed skewer.It's an odd, fascinating, informative, inspiring, amazing book (although it's useless as an academic source because it doesn't have any references or even a bibliography). It's a sharp and funny compendium of cooking tips and treats, from medieval times to the modern day . You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. On a sadder note, this book also acts as a reminder of what we have lost due not only to population growth, industrialisation, and commercialisation; but also our innate lazy desire to spend less time (and money) in producing very high quality, and varied, fresh ingredients and finished dishes.

The book is unusual as a history in not citing its sources, serving more as an oral social history from Hartley's own experiences as she travelled England as a journalist for the Daily Sketch, interviewing "the last generation to have had countryside lives sharing something in common with the Tudors.Hartley wrote wonderful stuff about the agriculture, husbandry, cooking, homemaking, and eating of England from the Neolithic Age onwards, concentrating mostly on medieval and early modern food practices that continued and/or were adapted, mostly in country foodways, through the 19th and 20th centuries. Contains 676 printed pages of text with monochrome illustrations and archive photographs throughout. some mace, a few cloves, some lemon peel, horse-radish root sliced, some sweet herbs, 6 schaloys [shallots], 8 anchovies, 3 spoonfulls of shred red peppers.

I don't know how to close this review, the book is one of a kind in my opinion, partly because it is not pretentious, and not fashionable in any way, but never boring.Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review.