While the history of food on the home front in wartime Britain has mostly focused on rationing, this book reveals the importance and scale of nation-wide communal dining schemes during this era. Welcomed by some as a symbol of a progressive future in which ‘wasteful’ home dining would disappear, and derided by others for threatening the social order, these sites of food and eating attracted great political and cultural debate.
Using extensive primary source material, Feeding the People in Wartime Britain examines the cuisine served in these communal restaurants and the people who used them. It challenges the notion that communal eating played a marginal role in wartime food policy and reveals the impact they had in advancing nutritional understanding and new food technologies. Comparing them to similar ventures in mainland Europe and understanding the role of propaganda from the Ministry of Food in their success, Evans unearths this neglected history of emergency public feeding and relates it to contemporary debates around food policy in times of crisis.
Table of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Emergency public feeding in 20th and 21st century Britain § The National Kitchen § The British Restaurant § Public Feeding § Eating Out § Many Mouths § Emergency Measures 1. 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 § Conclusion 2. The Birth of Emergency Public Feeding in the First World War Introduction 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 War Introduction 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 · Conclusion 5. The Birth of Emergency Public Feeding in the Second World War Introduction The British Restaurant is born Nutritional Reform § British Restaurants: how they looked and how they worked Left/Right political divisions Conclusion 6. The Development of Emergency Public Feeding in the Second World War Introduction 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 perspective Bibliography Index
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.
