Newspaper Article

Lashings of hard-boiled eggs

Brocket, Jane

2008

Overview

I found I was focusing on more or less a century of children's literature, what some might call a \"golden age\". For food and treats in children's literature change dramatically around the same time that, as Philip Larkin puts in his poem \"Annus Mirabilis\", sexual intercourse began in 1963. Few books after that date contain the evocative, real, home-made foods that feature so prominently in ones up to the 1950s. Novels become grittier, more concerned with realism and specific and social issues, and they begin to reflect the changes taking place in the home, the workplace and the kitchen. With fewer mothers and cooks making traditional cakes and biscuits, food becomes faster, branded, more convenient, and the lavish teas and suppers enjoyed after non-stop adventuring disappear as children's lives become more restricted and guarded. Accomplished children's writers are usually careful not to overindulge their readers: a chapter that features a meal or treat is rarely followed by another chapter containing food. A surfeit of indulgences and delicacies is not good in real life or fiction. Billy Bunter, Frank Richards' \"fat owl of the Remove\" who flourished from 1908 to 1940, is one of the greediest boys in literature. His lack of self-control is made all the more unpalatable by his habit of stealing other boys' food and eating it in secret. \"'There's cold chicken inside,' replied the Rat briefly; 'coldtongue-coldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkins-saladfrenchrollscresssandwidges- pottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater'

• Publisher: The Financial Times Limited
• Subject: 19th century / Blyton, Enid / Children & youth / Childrens literature / Eggs / Food / Novels / Tea / Writers