Immortal Meals #7: Papal Orgies November 4, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
It has been a while since Beachcombing visited an immortal meal, one of those dinners past where the great ate and history crackled in the air. Still suffering from the Italian Renaissance bug and given that this is, after all, the season of the chestnut he thought that he would today lift the veil on […]
Immortal Meals 6#: Arguments at Tehran October 19, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
WIBT (Wish I’d been there) moments from the Big Three Conference at Tehran in 1943 are so numerous that a casual reader would be spoilt for choice: Marshal Voroshilov dropping the Sword of Stalingrad at the worst possible moment in the ceremonials; German intelligence’s attempts to kill Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin; agreement on the United […]
Immortal Meals 5#: Mannerheim and the Cigar July 12, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
Halcyon hours this birthday evening with the flash of kingfisher wings: excellent presents, visits from friends and, best of all, the food… Strict health diet suspended for one glorious twelve-hour period. Beach has just finished a litre and a half of coca cola: if God exists then he tastes like cane sugar. In tribute to […]
Immortal Meals 4#: Eating a French King’s Heart June 17, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
There are great men among great men (Plato, Galileo, Einstein…) and great eccentrics among great eccentrics. For this second exclusive club Beachcombing’s candidates would include the charming and irrepressible William Buckland (obit 1856), Victorian geologist and zoophagist and, towards the end of his life, inmate in a mental asylum. Buckland – unlike his more mannered […]
Immortal Champagne Toast April 24, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
Beachcombing continues his series of Immortal Meals with a mere liquid lunch, a short champagne party from 29 August 1991 in Whitehall, London. Of course, champagne parties in London are two a penny: but this one was rather unusual as all those in attendance were (i) ostensibly at work and (ii) they were members of […]
Immortal Meals 2#: Eating in a Victorian Dinosaur April 10, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Sadly Beachcombing will just write as a short post today as the sfiga hex has settled over him. Paul Johnson’s book has extended its evil to Beach’s comic shelves that collapsed in the night and the attack on his body is now burning fierily, so much so that Beachcombing is enforcing what the medieval used to […]
Immortal Meals #1: Keats, Wordsworth, Haydon, Lamb, Monkhouse, Ritchie and the Comptroller March 14, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Beachcombing spent yesterday looking for modern food-tasters and, in so doing, found himself inspired by another question. What meal in history would he most want to have eaten at? Now, of course, there are two ways that the best meal might be judged: either in terms of the food eaten or in terms of the company. […]
