Daily Bread

'Fascinating' Philippa Gregory

A village gathers the harvest and celebrates with a feast. A cook adds foraged herbs to a pottage which will feed the entire household of a country estate. Lifting hands in prayer, a monk begins his fast.

Before the age of processed food, every meal held meaning. Much of what we value most in our food today - seasonality, local ingredients and sense of community - was once essential to every dish.

In Daily Bread, Charlie Taverner reconstructs the lost flavours and surprising culinary diversity of the past, from bustling markets in Tudor London and springtime carnivals in Italy to famine on the harsh coast of colonial America. This is the colourful, globe-spanning story of how food and people shaped the birth of the modern world.