![]() So, there I was, reading through my mother’s old cookery books, my mouth watering at the coloured illustrations of delicious recipes. ![]() ![]() ![]() Everything was on ration, and lots of things folk liked were just unobtainable. “When I was a young fellow, food was short because of World War II. And he spared no expense in his descriptions, clearly humble but very generous affairs. Celebrations of any sort were synonymous with generous feasts, and it was always around food that the characters got a chance to sit down a bond. Jacques’s books have always paid significant attention to food. They were absorbing, in the same way that some fantasy series are, characterized by strong world building as you become privy to another history, set of norms and traditions–and stereotypes. They were, in some ways incredibly repetitive and problematic (for example, how an individual’s moral compass is almost invariably determined by their species–foxes were sly, mice were brave, stoats were mostly mean minions–somehow I never noticed the issues with this until I read the Wikipedia article and thought about it), but they were also insatiably good in other respects. ![]() Brian Jacques’s Redwall was one of the beloved series of my younger reading days. ![]()
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