Food and drink

A medieval king dining

Pig-chickens, beavers’ tails and turtle soup: 8 fascinating foods through history

Dr Michael Mosley holds up a tapeworm

Tapeworms, arsenic and magic soap: fact-checking history’s weirdest fad diets and weight-loss gimmicks

A royal banquet in the 13th century. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Blog Medieval(ish) matters #14: What did an aristocratic household eat in the Middle Ages? And who was Eleanor de Montfort?

Man and woman using a long-handled wooden paddle to bake bread in an oven, 15th century. (Photo by Getty Images)

Saturday lecture: Medieval food

Annie Gray photographed at her home in East Anglia (Photo by Ian Farrell)

Cooking for Churchill

HistoryExtra’s top 15 most listened to podcast episodes

Medieval banquet

What time of the day did medieval people eat?

What was a drunkard's cloak used for? This illustration shows a man wearing the archaic punishment tool designed to punish habitual drinkers. (Photo by Getty Images)

Q&A What was a drunkard’s cloak used for?

Irish people starving during the Potato Famine

The Corn Laws crisis

A James Gillray cartoon: 'Germans eating sour-krout'.

Cabbages and kings: how Georgian royals brought continental food to the British menu

On his plantation in Georgia, American politician Benjamin Hawkins is teaching Creek Native Americans how to use a plow, 1805. (Photo by Granger, NYC / TopFoto)

Food and war

Pancake day celebrations

The history of Shrove Tuesday

New York City police watching agents pour liquor into a sewer

Wet vs Dry: how prohibition fractured America

Women queue for potatoes in a greengrocer's shop in London, c1945. (Photo by Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer/IWM via Getty Images)

Second World War

Saving food, saving lives: rationing in the Second World War

Prohibition protesters parade in a car emblazoned with signs and flags calling for the repeal of the 18th Amendment, which outlawed the production and consumption of alcohol in the United States. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)

“A great social experiment”: a brief guide to prohibition