The Taste of War
  • Published: 7 March 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141028972
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 672
  • RRP: $55.00

The Taste of War

World War Two and the Battle for Food

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EBook
21 Dec 2011
Paperback
7 Mar 2012
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A revelatory study of global famine and feast in the Second World War

In World War Two, 19 million people died in the conflicts across the globe. Yet in those same years, more than 20 million died from starvation and malnutrition. In The Taste of War Lizzie Collingham shows how food - and its lack - was central to the war's causes and continuation. She explores how starvation was often a deliberate governmental policy, and reveals how the necessity of feeding whole countries lead to Pearl Harbour, Germany's invasion of Russia, and the Holocaust itself.
  • Published: 7 March 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141028972
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 672
  • RRP: $55.00
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About the author

Lizzie Collingham

Lizzie Collingham taught History at Warwick University and was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge before becoming an independent historian. Her books include Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors and The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food. She is currently an Associate Fellow of Warwick University and the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. She recently completed a project researching the history of the kitchens of the Indian President’s palace and regularly lectures on a gastronomic tour of Kerala. She works in a garden shed near Cambridge.

portrait photo of Lizzie Collingham

Also by Lizzie Collingham

The Hungry Empire
The Biscuit
Curry
See all

Praise for The Taste of War

Remarkable, powerful

The Times

Amazing... she makes it impossible to think of the war in the old terms

Daily Mail

Fascinating, shocking ... For anyone who thought that the subject of food in the Second World War could be dispatched with a few clichés about digging for victory

Mail on Sunday

Ambitious, compelling, fascinating... uncomfortable reading if you began by believing in the possibility of a just war

Guardian

This fascinating calorie-centric history of the greatest conflict in world history is wholly convincing

Andrew Roberts

A powerful and important book... One of the beauties of this book is its savage unpicking of cherished myths

Independent

Lizzie Collingham's book possesses the notable virtue of originality...[She] has gathered many strands to pursue an important theme across a global canvas. She reminds us of the timeless truth that all human and political behaviour is relative

Max Hastings

The great merits of [this] book...lie in its extraordinary range...and in the entirely new perspective it throws on the Second World War

Bernard Potter, London Review of Books