Feast: A History of Grand Eating - Hardcover

Strong, Roy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151007586 ISBN 13: 9780151007585

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003

Synopsis

Sharing a grand meal has always been a complex social event. Feasts have been used to celebrate significant occasions, to parade rank and hierarchy, and to flatter and influence people. There has always been a theatrical element to the feast as well-from the nude dancers who entertained dinner guests in ancient Greece to the restrained rigors of the Victorian dinner party.
Sir Roy Strong examines this cultural phenomenon with knowledge, wit, and style-beginning with the ninth century B.C., when a Babylonian emperor discreetly invited seventy thousand guests for a ten-day celebration, and ending early in the twentieth century, by which time feasts had become somewhat more modest. Always attuned to how these celebrations mirror the societies that hold them and to the way they reflect shifts in power and class, this beautifully illustrated book offers a lively and illuminating history of grand eating.
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About this title

From the Publisher:

A unique and fascinating history of grand eating by one of the UK’s best-known writers.

Book Description:

'Only the puritan - or the seriously dyspeptic - could fail to enjoy this book.' Sunday Telegraph'We are all interested in food, but for anyone curious about its history, this book is a must.' Alan Davidson

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0151007586
• ISBN 13: 9780151007585
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368