Food

The quest for spiritual virtue through personal austerity drove many Eastern Christians to lead solitary lives as hermits surviving in the wilderness. Andrew Jotischky describes how indifference to food became an integral part of the monastic ideal in the Byzantine era, one revived in the West in the 11th and 12th centuries.

While industrialists in Manchester were busily engaged in developing the factory system, investors in London were applying its principles to the capital’s old pubs. The result was a coldly efficient business model. Jessica Warner explains how it worked and why it failed.

The English diet has been mythologised as one of roasted meats and few vegetables but, as Anita Guerrini concludes from a survey of early modern writings on the subject, the nation’s approach to food has been rather more complicated than that.

Ian Bradley on the precarious past of a pure Worcestershire water.

Frank Dikötter looks at how historians’ understanding of China has changed in recent years with the gradual opening of party archives that reveal the full horror of the Maoist era.

John Etty examines how far history has been moulded by enviroment,

Nick Cullather explains how the scientific discovery of the calorie meant food values could be quantified – and the US could make food an instrument of foreign policy.

Editor Peter Furtado introduces what this month's magazine has to offer.

Andy Lynes experiences a colourful and tasty vocation lesson in the history of the Regency period.

Janet MacDonald looks at the surprisingly good rations that kept the Jack-Tars jolly.

Robin Bruce Lockhart celebrates the past and present of the immortal dram and its historic links with our seasonal festivities at Christmas and New Year.