Bee Wilson is the author of The Way We Eat Now, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat and The Secret of Cooking. The Heart-Shaped Tin is due in May.
Who was it who invented the first black cakes Or the uncounted poppy-seed? Who mix’d The yellow compounds of delicious sweetmeats?
This was one of many questions asked by the poet Athenaeus in the Deipnosophists, a long series of dialogues on food and dining. If Athenaeus, who lived 1800 years ago, couldn’t, how much less equipped are we to answer questions about the way the...
Bee Wilson speaks to Malin Hay about Paul Newman’s mystique – his passivity, his domesticity and his irresistible blue eyes.
Bee Wilson talks to Tom about palm oil, which can be found in everything from pot noodles to shaving foam.
In 1901, London was still the largest city in the world. It had a population of six and a half million, two million more than New York and five million more than Tokyo.
Bee Wilson talks through Alma Mahler’s life, music, relationships and anti-semitism.
Not long after the First World War, the movie baron Samuel Goldwyn set up a stable of Eminent Authors in an attempt to give silent screenplays more literary weight. One of the recruits was the...
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