He invented an absurd uniform for himself with scruffy overalls and an aviator’s jacket topped by Ray-ban sunglasses

He invented an absurd uniform for himself, with scruffy overalls and an aviator’s jacket, topped by Ray-ban sunglasses, a corncob pipe and a floppy cap with the insignia of a field-marshal in the army of the Philippines where he had gone as a sort of mercenary proconsul after being virtually sacked as chief of staff of the American army. He was not, it has to be said, the most lovable of men. For all I know, it may be common knowledge that “tenterhooks” were devices for stretching washing when it was put out to dry, so obviating the need for ironing, but did you know that it was a Hogmanay custom in Glasgow to slip a red herring (“a super-salted bloater”) into a friend’s palm when shaking hands?. But I was tempted by whelk fritters and would be willing to sample steamed baby bracken. Salt cod with parsnips could happily appear on the menu in London’s most fashionable eateries and the same goes for lamb chop cooked in paper.

A “delightfully uncommon” ice-cream made with fresh brown breadcrumbs and covered in crystallised violets sounds wonderful.The greatest appeal of Food in England, however, lies in its fabulous accumulation of recondite information. Though noting that hedgehog tastes like “very tender chicken”, she italicises her demand, particularly applicable to motorists, that “No one should harm a hedgehog.” It is, however, doubtful if many modern readers will follow her dictum that “intelligent women will refuse to buy rabbit, hare or any game that has been cut up so that the method of killing is disguised”.Similarly, it seems doubtful that there will be a host of enthusiasts for muggety pie (boiled calf’s umbilical cord), roast swan (“moderately hot oven, two-three hours”) or lamb’s tail pie (“instruct the shepherd to keep the docked tails warm”). (She notes that the west country Sally Lunn bun, gold on top and white below, derives from the local pronunciation of “soleil-lune”.) For all our insularity, we have always had a taste for the exotic. Soy sauce was le dernier cri in the 18th century, when sailors used to bring the condiment home as a souvenir of the fashionable Orient.
Hartley’s concern for the welfare of the creatures we eat is wholly appropriate for a book about food in England. 1/-.”)

Hartley reveals that, prior to this century, English cuisine equalled, or even surpassed, that of France.

Rambling, chatty, sensible, impressively learned and occasionally passionate, it makes only the most reluctant and rudimentary concessions to structure. Scattered among her pages, Hartley includes – to take just a few examples – authoritative surveys of pig breeds, fungi, pastry shapes, seaweed, snails and types of bread. A dozen consecutive pages includes a list of 16th century garden herbs, a potted history of the East India Company, an account of how tables were laid over the centuries, and a contemporary critique of 19th-century coaching inns (“Crown, Rotherham: Very disagreeable and dirty Hashed venison, potted mackerel, cold ham, cheese and melon. But neither was there a need, under Manchester colours, to drift self-consciously through a gauze jungle of interesting reminiscence and abominable affectation.. Whether you’ll do much cooking from it is debatable, but this classic work from 1954 will certainly become one of the best-thumbed on your kitchen bookshelf. Written from the heart by one of our leading social historians, it is a tremendous hodge-podge of a book rather along the lines of an old-fashioned almanac.

There is an historic Manchester of riots and night schools, native Wesleyanism and immigrant Catholicism, the Jews and the Germans and their music and science – the Manchester which Engels lit upon and the Manchester Guardian before it went south.Although it would sustain a fascinating book, one doesn’t require Mr Driver to write about it. But in “Parks in Parenthesis”, he strikes up with that archetypal witterer, John Berger and says “A park is partly a field and a field is what? What defines a field – or a forest: the fence that bounds it or something more integral, more conceptual?”The difficulty is that the author’s style – Arts Council-ingratiating – does not fit his subject. The best, in “Avatars of Genius” records him trying to keep up with John Clayton, a more dazzling music student, getting sniffy about Shostakovich for being too conservative and, at Oxford, being touchingly stricken with disbelief in the musical talent which had buoyed him up for seven years and brought him there It is fine, endearing and real. When he talks about violin practice, grasping the point of vibrato and breaking through to a world of youth orchestras, he is talking as a decent technician lapped with unaffected enthusiasms But when he goes literary, he goes phoney. Take his introductory fanfare:”Inasmuch as the names of cities mean anything Manchester is a city a breast-like hill Mamucium a Roman breast later Manigeceastre Mamecestre a Norman breast and even eventually Madchester which is more like city built on a tilt a city of nightclub obsession pop music ecstasy crack the latest thing for Manchester has been doing many things though during the Middle Ages it was pretty much nothing marking time nicely with a flourishing trade in wool.” And so on for 2500 words, without full stop, comma or apostrophe, of cod Molly Bloom spattered with psychiatrist’s smut.The worst of Manchester Pieces wears its knowingness like a T-shirt and has damn-all to do with Manchester. The whole wispy ensemble is linked by the single theme of having something to do with Manchester.Where Mr Driver stays with the family – Grandma seen through admiring childish eyes and resentful adult ones, Uncle Dick with his obsessions and dedicated immobility – he keeps up interest and attraction.