A richly entertaining and topical history of food preservation and waste in Britain from the Elizabethan kitchen to the present day.
At a time when a third of the food we produce globally is wasted, Eleanor Barnett opens a window on the everyday experiences of ordinary people in the past to reveal how factors such as religion, class and gender have historically shaped attitudes towards food waste.
Leftovers deploys a wide historical lens to link the many ingenious ways in which our ancestors sought to extend the life of food - encompassing Tudor household management, Victorian public health initiatives and two World Wars - to such contemporary anxieties as climate change, globalisation, scientific advancement, poverty and inequality.
'[Barnett's] an indefatigable researcher' - The Mail on Sunday
Author
About Eleanor Barnett
Eleanor Barnett holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has recently been awarded a Leverhulme research fellowship. Her work uses food as a lens through which to access the daily lives of ordinary people as well as wider cultural, economic, political and religious historical processes. As @historyeats on Instagram, she posts daily food history stories, paintings and objects from across the world to a wide audience, and she is a regular contributor to radio and other public-facing media. Leftovers is her first non-fiction title.
