Food and drink

The Eridge Hunt, Boxing Day 1952

A brief history of Boxing Day

Pod Annie Gray WL

Christmas feasts with Annie Gray Episode 4: WW2 rationing & postwar absurdity

Christmas merriment in an old English manor in the 1500s

How to host a medieval Christmas

Pod Annie Gray WL

Christmas feasts with Annie Gray Episode 3: Victorian merrymaking

Still Life of Game Birds, oil on canvas. Birds such as goose, swan and peacock were often on the late medieval festive menu

General History

The roasts of Christmas past: 5 festive dinners from British history

Pod Annie Gray WL

Christmas feasts with Annie Gray Episode 2: Georgian elegance

Pod Annie Gray WL

Christmas feasts with Annie Gray Episode 1: Medieval & Tudor revelry

Photograph of Mrs Beeton bracing herself against a chair while wearing a long, dark-coloured gown

The secret life of Mrs Beeton: 10 pieces of life advice from her famous Book of Household Management

Daniel Lambert in a 19th-century painting

Super-sized Georgians: why satirists were fixated with fatness

Workers package Chicken Ramen, the first mass-produced instant noodles, in a factory in Japan, c1960

The age of noodles: Momofuku Ando and the rise of ramen in post-war Japan

pasta-4-60c5a50

How did pasta come to Europe and when did it first become established in Italy?

(Illustration: Clair Rossiter for BBC History Magazine)

Beans, ale & ‘windy meats’: surprising 17th-century aphrodisiacs

Food on a platter

Food history: everything you wanted to know

A red herring on a plate

Q&A Why do we say ‘red herring’?

Dr Katrina Moseley explores the surprising story of slimming clubs, touching on female friendship, entrepreneurialism and feminist fury. (Image by Getty Images)

The changing shape of slimming clubs