In her writing about food for the London Review of Books in the 1980s, Angela Carter found a potent subject for her unique combination of savage wit and political commentary. In the ‘piggery triumphant’ of modern foodism she saw a ‘hysterical new snobbery’ in which a kirsch roulade is photographed according to the conventions of pornography. In the history and origins of the potato – that ‘godless vegetable’ – she describes a long and turbulent story of imperialism and class politics. And in the cookery writing of Elizabeth David, Patience Gray and others, she found a rich literary form that, much like folk and fairy tales, had been unfairly neglected.
In this film, Marco Alessi revisits these pieces and, with Susannah Clapp and Edmund Gordon, explores their humour, style and intellectual background.
Read the pieces:
