Feeding the People in Wartime Britain

Bryce Evans is Professor of History at Liverpool Hope University, UK. An expert on food history he is the author of five books including Food and Aviation in Twentieth Century Britain (Bloomsbury, 2020) and has written numerous journal articles.

Feeding the People in Wartime Britain is an impressive piece of scholarship and deservesa wide readership among historians of the modern era. It is written in an accessible stylethat will also appeal to general readers.

• Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Emergency public feeding in 20th and 21st century Britain§ The National Kitchen§ The British Restaurant§ Public Feeding§ Eating Out§ Many Mouths§ Emergency Measures1. British Food and Feeding up to the First World War§ Introduction§ Faith and Consumption§ Female Voluntarism, Class and Gender§ Scientific Advance, Class, and Nutritional Reform§ Humanitarianism, Socialism and the New Liberalism§ Conclusion2. The Birth of Emergency Public Feeding in the First World WarIntroduction From soup kitchens to communal kitchens The radical threat of communal dining Avoiding the taint of charity and establishing the female role: the organisation of the new national kitchens Conclusion 3. The development of Emergency Public Feeding in the First World WarIntroduction Food Control Committees and the forward march of public feeding The ‘Peripatetic Piewoman’: a case study in female leadership in public feeding Food Reformers: Nutritional Instruction and Egalitarian Eating ‘Civilizational Value’? Arnold Bennett versus GK Chesterton Resistance grows Conclusion 4. British Food and Feeding in the Interwar period· Introduction· Public Feeding limps on as British society changes· Nutrition, the Body and National Health· Communal Feeding as Communism and the female call for ‘permanent relief’· International Comparisons· Conclusion5. The Birth of Emergency Public Feeding in the Second World WarIntroduction The British Restaurant is born Nutritional Reform § British Restaurants: how they looked and how they workedLeft/Right political divisions Conclusion 6. The Development of Emergency Public Feeding in the Second World WarIntroduction Nutritional reformers versus the sausage roll Emergency Feeding Schemes – the Queen’s Messenger Convoys A Plethora of Schemes Eating Out with Tommy Trinder (and Barbara Cartland) Utility – ‘marginal’ to the war effort, or more significant? Conclusion Conclusion: Emergency feeding in historical perspectiveBibliographyIndex