April 03, 2006

Feast: A History of Grand Eating, Roy Strong

I could not enjoy this catalogue of convivial excess because I felt a constant undertow of teleology, specifically that the purpose of all Western feasting (it has no other) was either to prepare for the English rich in the late 1800s, or to mourn their vanishing. Pleasant as mahogany and fish-slices are, I doubt they were either more convivial than the triclinium or more excessive than the nef.

The book may have begun as articles for Country Life, which might explain the slant.

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So wrote clew in History.
And thus wrote others:
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