An Extraordiary Thousand years of history.

After 1100 English cooking reached a high degree of gastronomy, which it shared internationally with the courts of Europe. Medieval food was stylish and tasteful, it was food designed to please and satisfy very sophisticated palates and right up to the mid nineteenth century it had epochs and phases of greatness, so how did we throw all that away? And not only throw it all away but forget all about it?

This important book is a breath-taking attempt to trace the changes and influences of food in Britain through the Black Death, the Enclosures, the Reformation, the Age of Exploration, the Hanoverians, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of Capitalism through the sado-masochism of the Victorian non-conformists to the present day.

There has never been such an exciting, broad-scoped history of the food of these islands. It should remind us all of our rich past and the gastronomic importance of British cuisine.

Books such as Jeffrey Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything and Mark Kurlansky's Cod have created a wave of interest in food culture and history and Colin Spencer's masterful, readable account of our culinary history will be this year's most celebrated contribution to the genre.

Colin Spencer is one of the country's leading food historians but his prolific output has not been limited to this field alone. He has written nine novels, a dozen cookery books, has six plays produced, as well as writing for television and film. For thirteen years he was food columnist for The Guardian.