Our October 2025 evening talk welcomed Diane Purkiss, professor of English Literature at Oxford University , and fellow and tutor at Keble College.
Diane’s talk explored the often-overlooked history of English food from the perspective of the poor, focusing on the 99% who lived hand-to-mouth.
Another well-attended evening was rounded off with a string of questions from members who clearly enjoyed a fascinating and entertaining talk.
Diane drew from personal experience and historical sources to illustrate how poverty shapes food choices though the ages. She touched on medieval subsistence diets right through to 20th-century working-class meals. In particular, she highlighted the ingenuity of families who stretched meagre resources — surviving on foraged greens, dairy scraps, and offal — and the emotional toll on mothers trying to provide for family needs.
Diane used Langland’s Piers Plowman to illustrate the harsh realities of medieval subsistence, where hunger was a constant threat and diets consisted of oatcakes, curds, and foraged greens.
This portrayal aligns with the broader climatic backdrop of the Little Ice Age — a period of cooling that disrupted agriculture across Europe. Shortened growing seasons and crop failures deepened food insecurity, especially for the landless poor. Piers’s seasonal diet, lacking fat and protein, reflects the nutritional deficits common during this time, when even modest luxuries like pork or bacon were rare.
Diane warned against romanticising such diets, noting that children often suffered from pellagra, scurvy, and rickets. The Little Ice Age magnified these hardships, turning subsistence into a daily struggle. With these and many other examples, Diane showed how climate, poverty, and social inequality intertwined — and how the poor, despite everything, developed resilient foodways to survive.
As the industrial revolution took hold, rural families with gardens and communal knowledge fared better than urban slum dwellers, who had to rely on convenience foods. Government denial of malnutrition and misguided advice compounded hardship, while experiments revealed the transformative impact of simple additions like milk and butter.
Evacuees during WWII exposed cultural divides in food habits, revealing how deeply foodways are tied to identity and survival. Diane urged respect for the resourcefulness of the poor, reminding us that bad diets stem from scarcity, not ignorance.
Her talk – delivered with humour and wit – was a tribute to the dignity and creativity of those who made do with little — and a call to honour their legacy in how we think about food today.
About Diane Purkiss
Diane works on witchcraft, folklore, the English Civil War, and food. Her book ‘English Food: A Social History of England Told Through the Food on Its Tables’ is available now in paperback.
She is now working on a book about the English at sea and a study of executions in Tudor England.
Next Talk A History of Fairford Church >>>
