This is the best of all books on English food. First published in 1954, it has popped up in print at intervals ever since, always welcome, always finding new admirers. Dorothy Hartley described Food In England as being like "an old-fashioned kitchen, not impressive, but a warm and friendly place, where one can come in at any time and have a chat with the cook". So it is; and like a good old-fashioned kitchen it"s intensely personal and full of bits and pieces at first sight not directly related to the production of food but somehow essential to the character of the place. Writing when she did, Dorothy Hartley was perhaps one of the last food historians to have easy access to the living past and her book views the preceding thousand years of food in England as a continuous present, all the cooks of the past wandering in and out of her kitchen. Full of traditional recipes, historical information, regional kitchen lore, personal reminiscences, household hints, gardening tips and brewing instructions, illuminating quotations and beautifully illustrated with expressive line drawings, Food In England is unsummarisable, copious and generous. Just buy it. Nobody with any interest whatsoever in English (and Scottish and Welsh) food, or who has any concern in what might make Britain British, should be without it. --Robin Davidson