Pie Fidelity: In Defence of British Food

Pete Brown, MA 1991

A journey through British food, from the acclaimed author of The Apple Orchard.

In Britain, we have always had an awkward relationship with food. We’ve been told for so long that we are terrible cooks and yet when someone with a clipboard asks us what the best things are about being British, our traditional food and drink are more important than the monarchy and at least as significant as our landscape and national monuments in defining a collective notion of who we are.

Taking nine archetypically British dishes – Pie and Peas, A Cheese Sandwich, Fish and Chips, Spag Bol, Devonshire Cream Tea, Curry, The Full English, The Sunday Roast and a Crumble with Custard – and enjoying them in their most typical settings, Pete Brown examines just how fundamental food is to our sense of identity, perhaps even our sense of pride, and the ways in which we understand our place in the world.

“A much-needed book… makes an important point without false pride or sentimentality… should open a few eyes, particularly among those who make a living writing about munching.”

The Times

“The book examines a series of traditional British meals with Hornby's geeky obsessiveness and Orwell's incisive class observation ... His prose is engaging, his storytelling effortless ... Brown writes beautifully and fondly of every dish in a way that will have you desperate to taste it again at the end of each chapter. This historical information he weaves around the food is plentiful, accurate and worn lightly, and his observations are fresh and provocative.”

Financial Times

“Part Nigel Slater, part Bill Bryson, and wholly delicious...Funny, informative and written with passion, Pie Fidelity is a love poem to all that's great in British cooking.” (Mail on Sunday) “Genuinely revealing...Brown evokes the emotionalism of eating.” (The Guardian) “As much as his book is a reflection of his experiences, reading it inevitably leads the reader to examine their own past, and how food defines who we are, or used to be.”

Waitrose Weekend Magazine

ISBN: 978-1846149597 (hardback); 978-0141986739 (paperback)