Jack Merry who wrote this review for Green Man, our sister publication, likes ale and most British food stuffs.
Judy Spours: Cakes and Ale — The Golden Age of British Feasting (The National Archives Press (UK), 2006)
Needing something tasty to read between gigs on a recent winter tour that would take our contradance band, Danse Macabre, where booksellers were quite rare, I tossed Cakes and Ale — The Golden Age of British Feasting into my travel kit as it looked like it would be an interesting read. I was right — it’s a delightful romp through a Britain where cakes and ale were considered nutritious and healthy. Really. Truly. Now admittedly most musicians I know consider a few pints of ale and a brimming Irish breakfast to be a healthy way to finish off a night of playing tunes so I’m not going to judge the good sense of the affluent and newly leisured Victorian and Edwardian middle classes by what they considered healthy as I find some of our present-day practices to be dubious at best. No, I’m simply going to look at Spours’ detailed examination of how they feasted upon what they saw as their due.
As the dust jacket for Cakes and Ale notes, ‘Judy Spours is a writer and editor specializing in cultural history, art and design. Her publications include Art Deco Tableware: British Domestic Ceramics 1925-1940 and has several books about interior design and decoration. She has also written about art, design and food for magazines in the UK and the US.’ A quick search on the net shows she has done a number of other works, including Romantic Country Style, The House in Bloom: Decorating with Floral Themes, and The Country Home: Creating the Essence of Country Style. Not precisely sterling qualifications for a rather knowledgeable look at Victorian and Edwardian culinary history, so it is surprising she turned her attention to this subject. Even her City University London bio offers scant clues to her interest saying only that ‘she currently works as a freelance development and project editor for a range of UK book publishers, specialising in fine arts, design, architecture and social history.’
Now stop grumbling — you may not care about the background of the author, but I do. You and I both certainly judge the worthiness of reading a novel by what we know about the author and what they have written prior to this particular work. Why should be non-fiction be judged any different? I’ll drop this subject now, but I definitely need to do a database search through the local university soon to see what her articles have been.
The book itself is quite good, as she certainly knows her subject. Breezy and written with a lavish number of illustrations including the glorious printed advertisements that enticed the prosperous middle-class to part with their hard-earned new wealth to purchase the latest foods. The book is very much written for a lay audience and is not really intended as a scholarly work. Now at a tight 175 odd pages I would not expect a great deal of scholarly material and it’s not here. What is here is a romp through the foods and drink of an era that really created modern English dietary habits. Starting with the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition and the wares that were displayed there, she shows how the culinary delights of the world became part of modern Britain with her ending point being the sinking of the Titanic. There was Swiss chocolate, cod liver oil from Newfoundland, cocoa and teas — all luxuries being introduced to consumers new flush. And keep in mind that food was, and perhaps still is, a status symbol — handing oranges out as gifts to children at Christmas was showing which really were well-off! Now imagine an entire nation encountering new foods and drinks on a scale comparable to you walking into one of the Whole Foods markets now popping up all over London!
The whisky and ale advertisements featured gentlemen who sported top hats and working men of course had their flat caps. Ever hear the Fairport Convention song called ‘Jewel in the Crown’ with everyone knows his class? The adverts here clearly show the companies selling goods of an edible were clearly, almost painfully aware of the class structures of Britain — buy our goods but keep in mind that they won’t change where you belong in the class system! If present-day activists against the capitalist system think adverts are designed to make folks buy what they don’t need, they should read this work to see how little that industry has changed over the past hundred years.
For me, the most interesting thing here was the adverts for ales. Now any regular reader of Green Man now that we love our ale — be it a properly warmed Guinness, a Newcastle Brown Ale, or perhaps even a Hobgoblin Strong Dark Ale from The Wychwood Brewery. So I was quite impressed with the wealth of detail she gave regards how ales were marketed. And there’s enough detail about food and drink of all manner you care to think of to keep any culinary fan happily reading for quite some time. This book’s high recommended.
I do have one complaint. The index is seriously screwed up — just look up pineapple to see what I mean.
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