Diane Purkiss

English lecturer Professor Diane Purkiss looks back through the centuries at the development of recipes and mealtime rituals and explains how food has both reflected and inspired social continuity and change.

Purkiss uses food to chart changing views on class, gender and tradition. She looks at historical quirks such as trial by ordeal of bread, a fondness for ‘small beer’ and a war-time ice-cream substitute called ‘hokey pokey’ made from parsnips. And she explores the development of the coffee trade and coffee houses where views were exchanged on politics and culture, looks at the first breeders of beef and how they triggered the Glencoe Massacre, and explains why toast is as English as the chalk cliffs.

Purkiss is a professor of English literature at the University of Oxford with interests in the English Civil War, Milton, the supernatural, food and food history, children’s literature, and folklore. She is author of The English Civil War: A People’s History.