Stuart Walton reviews Stuffed: A History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain, by Pen Vogler.
One of the most productive developments in recent food writing has been the amalgamation of contemporary food politics and its concerns with the food history of individual cultures. In this regard, British food writing has been particularly prominent. Diane Purkiss’s English Food: A People’s History (reviewed in WFW 79, pp.60–61) was a signal contribution to this genre, and the work of Pen Vogler is another. While Vogler’s previous book, Scoff (2020), looked at the relations between food and class in British history, her latest offering unpicks the embattled—often triumphant, sometimes infuriating—history of administrative intervention in who eats what, whether they have enough of it, and what it is doing to them over the long term.
Vogler’s approach is transhistorical. She opens with the gradual but relentless process of land enclosure in the British Isles, with Before and After chapters on its demi-paradisiacal prequel and its subsequent effects, before orienting a series of chapters on the ethical issues that affect the provisioning of a population during times of crisis—from harvest failures in the 18th century, to the World Wars and the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout the text, the balance of sharp political observation, founded on exhaustive research, and entertainingly narrated history is dexterously maintained, and the text is leavened with recipes reconstructed from historical sources for the modern home cook—all without any overbearing sense of too many plates being spun.
An eternally vexed question
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
