Lizzie Collingham is an independent scholar known for her books onEnglish food culture, including the 2006 bookCurry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. Collingham won theGuild of Food Writers Food Book Award in 2018 forThe Hungry Empire.
Lizzie Collingham was born in England in 1947.[1] She gained her BA at theUniversity of Sussex in 1991, and an MA at theUniversity of York in 1992. She earned her PhD on the "British body in India (1800–1947)" at theUniversity of Cambridge in 1997.[1][2]
Collingham began her career teaching history at theUniversity of Warwick. From there she became a junior research fellow atJesus College, Cambridge. She then chose to work independently, remaining as a bye-fellow of Jesus College. She has been a writing fellow for the Royal Literary Fund at theUniversity of East Anglia and has worked in other colleges at the University of Cambridge, includingNewnham College.[2][3] She has served as a specialist lecturer on food forMartin Randall Travel.[2][3]
ReviewingCurry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors forEclectica, Niranjana Iyer wrote that as an Indian living in the West, he read the book with delight. He notes that the spice most characteristic ofIndian cuisine and the British Vindaloocurry was brought byChristopher Columbus from the New World to Spain, and then byVasco da Gama from Portugal to India. "Vindaloo" itself is, he writes, garbled Portuguesevinho e alhos, "wine and garlic". He notes, too, thatchai was invented by the British and then adopted by Indians. His only regret is that there are few vegetarian curries in the book.[4]
William Grimes, reviewingCurry forThe New York Times, described it as a "fascinating if digressive inquiry", into one of the world's "most internationalized foods". He notes Japan's curry ricekaree raisu and Samoa's canned fish andcorned beef curry, alongside New York'skosher curries, or the British curriedchicken Kiev. Grimes comments that the subject in Collingham's hands is far wider than curry, as it explores Indian cuisine's "often bizarre" cultural exchanges and its global export, stating that "it is a British invention".[5]
Writing inThe Guardian, Nicola Barr commented that Collingham counters the view that dishes like(chicken) tikka masala are somehow "less authentic" than some supposedly "pure" dish in India. Barr notes Collingham's analysis, that Indian food "has always been the product of cultural integration, its flavours influenced by colonisation and emigration from the days of the British Raj."[6]
Kwasi Kwarteng, inThe Guardian, callsThe Hungry Empire "an energetic and refreshing account of a little considered aspect of British history."[7] He comments that Collingham uses people's diet to analyse their "complex, even chaotic international connections."[7] The book, based on 20 meals, examines each meal's story about theBritish Empire.Christmas pudding, Kwarteng writes, was considered a national dish and personified as a "blackamoor who derives his extraction from the spice lands", because its dried fruits, spices, and sugar all came from the colonies. He comments that Collingham's is a "remarkable achievement" to make an old subject so exciting.[7]
The Guardian's review ofThe Taste of War, by Lara Feigel, states that war and famine go together, sometimes as a deliberate strategy. Both Germany and Britain prevented populations from getting their food during theSecond World War. Feigel complains that Collingham was writing "two books at once": one of history, one of a "prehistory of the present", showing how the past governs the present; in her view, the book should have had "a single, chronological narrative". But overall, she found the book "timely and sensible" as the need to share food equitably is again becoming an issue.[8]
Collingham won theGuild of Food Writers Food Book Award 2018 for her bookThe Hungry Empire.[2]
Data related toLizzie Collingham at Wikidata