Elizabeth M. Collingham

Lizzie Collingham is an independent scholar known for her books on English food culture, including the 2006 book Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. Collingham won the Guild of Food Writers Food Book Award in 2018 for The Hungry Empire.

Early life

Lizzie Collingham was born in England in 1947. She gained her BA at the University of Sussex in 1991, and an MA at the University of York in 1992. She earned her PhD on the "British body in India (1800–1947)" at the University of Cambridge in 1997.

Career

Collingham began her career teaching history at the University of Warwick. From there she became a junior research fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. She then chose to work independently, remaining as a bye-fellow of Jesus College. She has been a writing fellow for the Royal Literary Fund at the University of East Anglia and has worked in other colleges at the University of Cambridge, including Newnham College.

Reception

Curry

Reviewing Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors for Eclectica, Niranjana Iyer wrote that as an Indian living in the West, he read the book with delight. He notes that the spice most characteristic of Indian cuisine and the British Vindaloo curry was brought by Christopher Columbus from the New World to Spain, and then by Vasco da Gama from Portugal to India. "Vindaloo" itself is, he writes, garbled Portuguese , "wine and garlic". He notes, too, that was invented by the British and then adopted by Indians. His only regret is that there are few vegetarian curries in the book.

William Grimes, reviewing Curry for The New York Times, described it as a "fascinating if digressive inquiry", into one of the world's "most internationalized foods". He notes Japan's curry rice and Samoa's canned fish and corned beef curry, alongside New York's kosher curries, or the British curried chicken Kiev. Grimes comments that the subject in Collingham's hands is far wider than curry, as it explores Indian cuisine's "often bizarre" cultural exchanges and its global export, stating that "it is a British invention".

Writing in The Guardian, Nicola Barr commented that Collingham counters the view that dishes like (chicken) tikka masala are somehow "less authentic" than some supposedly "pure" dish in India. Barr notes Collingham's analysis, that Indian food "has always been the product of cultural integration, its flavours influenced by colonisation and emigration from the days of the British Raj."

The Hungry Empire

Kwasi Kwarteng, in The Guardian, calls The Hungry Empire "an energetic and refreshing account of a little considered aspect of British history."

The Taste of War

The Guardians review of The Taste of War, by Lara Feigel, states that war and famine go together, sometimes as a deliberate strategy. Both Germany and Britain prevented populations from getting their food during the Second World War. Feigel complains that Collingham was writing "two books at once": one of history, one of a "prehistory of the present", showing how the past governs the present; in her view, the book should have had "a single, chronological narrative". But overall, she found the book "timely and sensible" as the need to share food equitably is again becoming an issue.

Books

Honours and distinctions

Collingham won the Guild of Food Writers Food Book Award 2018 for her book The Hungry Empire.