In celebration of Heritage Open Days fortnight, Bath Royal are releasing a talk online by Professor Robert Morrison about Regency Food. Robert Morrison is the author of ‘The Regency Revolution: Jane Austen, Napoleon, Lord Byron and the Making of the Modern World’, which was shortlisted for both the HWA Non-Fiction Crown Award and the RBC Taylor Prize and was one of The Economist’s books of the year in 2019.

Professor Morrison takes us on a brief tour of the food and drink habits of England during the Regency period. It was a time of great need for many and great excess for a few. But all social classes were united in their love of booze (wine for the upper echelons, gin for the urban poor and cider for rural folk). As Prof Morrison explains, even then there were exceptions, such as the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose avowed vegetarianism made him a figure of fun in his time but whose views are far more in tune with modern sensibilities.

See Robert’s top Regency foodie facts here!

Professor Morrison is the author of “The Regency Revolution: Jane Austen, Napoleon, Lord Byron and the Making of the Modern World.”

Enjoy!