Beef and Liberty - Brief Article - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2003

Ben Rogers. Chatto & Windus. 207 pages. ISBN 0-70116980-X. The underlying theme of this book is that 'all cultural identity is closely bound up with food and cooking'. Dr Rogers' concern is with the identification of Englishmen with beef and with plenty of it, as opposed, for example, to underfed, effeminate Frenchmen across the channel who had neither beef nor constitutional liberty.

The discussion naturally leads to caricaturists, butchers and the English race as it spread abroad. Whether it justified a long diversion on bull-dogs and bear-baiting is another question. Also, the author, whose field is intellectual history, seems to think that Puritans were not members of the Church of England and that Sir Robert Walpole was a 'great Whig oligarch'. A consecrated host is described oddly as a 'Eucharist wafer'. There is sometimes a penchant for vulgar language more acceptable in the gutter press. The author can also be politically correct to an absurd degree and writes that 'Gillray's John Bull was a black man'. Also, the editing could have been better: what is 'BMC' in the notes? One assumes 'British Museum Catalogue'. Still, it is an interesting theme and a subject that needed discussing. (T.B.)