I picked it up by chance at Ron’s Bookshop in Hawker (I think) and at the time I didn’t know of Raey Tannahill’s standing in the literary world. Food in History is a very entertaining piece of non-fiction. It has the academic qualities of a textbook but there’s nothing stuffy about the writing at all. In fact, it made me lol a number of times. Apart from being fun to read, there’s some hugely valuable information in it, both historical and anthropological. One of the key things is that it really gives context to our modern way of eating. It was written in the 70’s but wouldn’t be able to tell. It charts food in our history from the very beginning to “now”. While not exhaustive, I’d say incredibly thorough (it is fairly light-on when it comes to Australian aboriginal history, but given it was written by a Brit in the 1970’s this isn’t surprising). There are a huge amount of references that I’m starting to work through and they’ve already given me some fascinating new things to read. An essential book for anyone interested in food, cooking or human history. 5 spatulas out of 5!
