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Delia Smith: friend of the royals, a national treasure who taught us how to boil and egg and an advocate for radical spiritualism. In this episode Lewis Bassett, Felicity Cloak and Zoe Williams unpick who Delia is and what her impact has been on how we eat in Britain. This is the first episode of our new series on cooks who've change the way we eat. Subscribe to hear future episodes on everyone from Madhur Jaffrey to Jamie Oliver. Mixing and sound design from Forest DLG. Follow the Full...

Who or what are ultra elite restaurants for? Welcome to a pervert's guide to fine dining. Produced and presented by Lewis Bassett, featuring Andy Hayler, Erin McDonnell and Robin Burrow. Mixing and sound design from Forest DLG. Follow the Full English on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Clips from: The Bear, FXGrant Achatz on Chef's Table, NetflixDan Barber on Chef's Table, NetflixArtisans of Craft: Thomas Keller, Peter MillarMasterchef The Professionals with Rasmus Munk, BBCThe Menu,...

Join us, join us, join us for a Full English Christmas special! Get the turkey in the oven and warm some wine as we answer all your questions on why we eat and drink in the ways we do at Christmas. And hear us rate the best and worse mince pies from high street coffee shops. Lewis Bassett is joined by the man of music Forest DLG, master baker Rebecca Spaven, the talented Jemma Greenwood and the food historian Neil Buttery. Hohoho and sponsor our show: https://www.patreon.com/fullenglish Find...

What did the ancient Romans do for us? Well, according to Thom Ntinas from The Delicious Legacy podcast, they were the first to give Britain the burger. Find out more about the lasting culinary legacies of ancient Roman Britain in this special cross over episode. Presented by Thom Ntinas and Lewis Bassett. Produced and edited by Thom Ntinas. Music from Pavlos Kapralos. Follow the Full English on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Get extra content and support the show on Patreon Hosted on...

Costa is the nation's most popular coffee shop. There are 1000 more Costa than Starbucks and 500 more than Greggs. And that's before we take into account Costa's express machines and retail products. How did Costa get so big and why do we love it? Lewis Bassett is joined by co-host Jemma Greenwood, comments from the coffee historian Jonathan Morris and a Costa taste testing with three time UK barista champion Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood. Forest DLG provides the music and sound design. Find...

Few people are aware that in the first half of the 20th century the British government helped establish a huge number of popular canteens, serving food to everyone who wanted it during war time and afterwards. These British Restaurants, as they became known during World War II, were, at their hight, more numerous than today's McDonalds and Wetherspoons combined. Lewis Bassett speaks to Bryce Evans, a Professor of History at Liverpool Hope University, about British restaurants and their...

Vines in a Cold Climate is a new book by Henry Jeffreys charting the sparkling rise of English wine and the people behind it. Lewis Bassett and Jemma Greenwood speak to Henry over a couple of bottles of vins anglais about Henry's book, the story of English wine and attitudes towards wine drinking in England. Mixing and sound design is as ever from Forest DLG. Follow the Full English on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Get extra content and support the show on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See...

What is a caff when it's not a cafe? Where did the caff come from and who will mourn the greasy spoon if, as we hear, they're disappearing? Joining Lewis Bassett is the author and Guardian columnist Felicity Cloake and Isaac Rangaswami, writer and the man behind the Instagram page Caffs Not Cafes. Felicity's book is Red Sauce Brown Sauce. Her writing for the Guardian can be found here. Isaac has written about caffs for the Guardian and Vittles. Mixing and sound design is from Forest...

There exists a distinctly middle class culture in Britain that has taught us to love our meat, especially if we feel guilty about eating it. But what if rather than caring for the animals we eat, we thought about animals as an exploited class who deserve justice, not a cuddle before they are slaughtered? So argues Amber Husain in Meat Love, a powerful little book that is out now. Lewis Bassett speaks to Amber Husain about the book, whether capitalism really is a barrier to changing our food...

By creating a network of pubs that are accessible to anyone with 89p for a coffee, JD Wetherspoon has become something of a public service. But should Britain's most popular pub chain really be owned by Tim Martin and a small group of shareholders? Is it time to nationalise Wetherspoons? In this episode, Lewis Bassett is joined by Jemma Greenwood to discuss the origins and meanings of Spoons, and by James Meadway to discuss pubs and public ownership. Mixing and sound design is from Forest...

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British people are fatter and sicker than people in most other rich nations. That's down to our food system, argues Henry Dimbleby in his new book Ravenous, co-authored with Jemima Lewis. In this episode, Lewis Bassett speaks to Henry about his book, covering everything from why exercise won't help you lose weight to how what we eat is a leading cause of climate change to why food companies are helpless to create the kind of food system we all need to stay alive.   Henry Dimbleby is the...

The British realise their food is bland and that's a good thing, according to world renowned economist Ha-Joon Chang. In this interview, Lewis Bassett speaks to Ha-Joon about some of the key themes in his latest book 'Edible Economics'; from how the field of economics has become something of a monoculture, to why its hypocritical of rich nations to encourage poorer ones to accept free trade. Ha-Joon Chang is a professor of economics at SOAS university London. 'Edible Economics' is out...

From around the 1500s to the early 19th century, when the price of food went up poor people were likely to riot. Today we've seen the highest food price rises in a generation, but does anyone feel angry? Lewis Bassett speaks to economist James Meadway on the causes of rising prices, to historians Steve Poole and Joe Stanley on the history of food riots in England as well as to regular shoppers in Rotherham. We find out whether people are angry about the cost of living crisis today and whether...

Lewis Bassett talks all things curry with the writer Sejal Sukhadwala. Find Sejal's book, The Philosophy of Curry, here. You can also find Sejal's work in the Guardian, the FT, Atlas Obscurer, The Fence and elsewhere. Find out more about the course on Food, Politics and City which I mention in the show in this YouTube video or at the Birkbeck website here. Mixing and sound design is as ever from Forest DLG. Follow the Full English on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Get extra content and...

Fishing was often at the heart of the Brexit debate. But three years on, what are the results? Lewis speaks to Jerry Percy, a retired commercial fisherman and director of the chair of New Under Ten Fishermen's Association. If anyone has a grasp of what Brexit has, and could, mean for commercial fishing its Jerry. Mixing and sound design from Forest DLG. Follow the Full English on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Get extra content and support the show on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See...

Greggs is one of the biggest food to go retailers in the UK, selling 3 million sausage rolls each week. It has its own line in branded sportswear and a huge fan base. But how did Greggs get so big and what does it all mean? Lewis Bassett speaks to Jake Grover (aka Pasty), Ed Cumming, Sam White, Kate Magee and Sabine Benoit. Pasty can be found on Instagram here. Check out Ed Cumming's article on Greggs in The Guardian here. Sam White is the Editor of Bakery Business Magazine. Kate Magee is the...

Why is our food so expensive now? James Meadway explains. We also discuss the link between inflation and trade unions, and the current wave of strikes in the UK right now. James has held senior roles at the New Economics Foundation and the Progressive Economy Forum. He hosts the weekly economics podcast Macrodose. This interview forms a part of an upcoming episode on whether high food prices (still) make us angry. Be sure to check that out in the New Year! Mixing and music from Forest DLG. ...

Lewis Bassett speaks to Diane Purkiss about her new book 'English Food: A People's History'. We talk about what English food is, how and when English food became bland, why Elizabeth David is a food snob, why we fear GMOs and how what we eat in England is so deeply interwoven with our social class. Diane Purkiss is a professor of English Literature at Oxford University. Her book 'English Food' is out now. Get extra content and support the show on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See...

Did former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher help invent Mr Whippy Ice Cream? And what can Mr Whippy tell us about the Conservative Party today? With guests: Zoe Philipson, award winning ice cream retailer from Tyne Valley Ices Jon Agar, author of Science in the 20th Century and Beyond Ian Lavery, Labour MP for Wansbeck Will Davies, author of Nervous States Created by Lewis Bassett. Additional editing and sound design from Forest DLG. Follow The Full English on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter ...

In this final episode of season one, Lewis Bassett and Forest DLG make a fish finger bhorta with the journalist and commentator Ash Sarkar. Does the fish finger bhorta count as English food? We hear from the academic Jason Edwards on what national cuisine actually is. Lewis eats Ghanian food in London with the cook and author Riaz Phillips. The chef Andrew Wong and the academic Catherine Hall question the boundaries of national cuisines. And journalist Adam Ramsay, Sunder Katwala from the...

How did the English go from eating cans of baked beans to dribbling olive oil over a fresh rocket and sundried tomato salad? In this episode, we’ll look at how a movement of cooks and cookery writers helped to challenge the status of elite, classical French cuisine as the gold standard of food in England with provincial French and Mediterranean cooking. It’s also the story of the rise of a new middle class movement whose European tastes not only assumed a central place at our dinner tables...

Is regenerative agriculture the answer to the problems caused by factory farms, or might modern forms of food production have an important role to play in the future of food in England? In this episode, Lewis Bassett speaks to: Matt Chatfield, sheep farmer and advocate of alternative farming techniques; the nutritionist Lucy Williamson; the historian David Edgerton; the farmer and director of the Soil Association Liz Bowles, Oxford based climate scientist Michael Clark; author and journalist...