THE HUNGRY EMPIRE

(Vintage £9.99) FROM cups of tea to Christmas pudding, Britain’s traditional foods represent our Imperial history in edible form. Historian Lizzie Collingham tells the story of how food fuelled the British Empire and shaped the world in 20 chapters, each inspired by a single meal.

The sinking of Henry VIII’s warship, the Mary Rose, on July 19, 1545, yielded fascinating insights into the diet of its unfortunate crew.

While much of their food was home-produced, their staple meal of salt cod came from the American coast, thousands of miles away.

‘This reliance on faraway places to supply food was to become a hallmark of empire,’ Collingham notes.

From Samuel Pepys’s first encounter with ‘a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never drank before’, to a wartime meal of bully beef and sweet potatoes, this is a fascinating and timely study of the far- flung sources of our food supply.