Official Opinions Relating to Questions of School Law by the Attorney General and the Superi... Book

Giving up at just over a third read. Extraordinarily bad, sweeping and selective on actual history. Hardly anything on trade, commerce, economy (up to 17th century, do not know whether it gets better later), it's as if what people ate developed independently of these factors. He looks at cookbooks and things like expense records from estates and households. He'll say, 'in year xx, expenses on food increased' but does not look at why. He's also enthralled by medieval recipes and use of spices and almond milk (later noticing that almond milk use in cooking fell - again without the why/how), then how this changed in Tudor times - but if you look at Tudor dishes he does mention, in their use of spices they are quite similar to what was eaten at the high table in medieval England. He is often self-contradictory. The final straw for me was Spencer talking about industry (meaning guilds) and working class (meaning peasantry) in the 17th century.