Fish, Food from the Waters : Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 1997

The annual volume of the proceedings of the Oxford Symposium, the longest-running colloquy on food and food history in the western world.

The subject of this year's discussions was not just fish but the diet of fishermen, and any foodstuff that may be culled from the waters, such as seaweed.

The result, as ever, is a collection of essays that ranges widely over the topic, exciting lateral speculation that can only benefit the study of food and foodways.

Among the contributions are a piece on the diet of nineteenth-century whalers and whaling communities, several on fish in antiquity, including a study of fish consumption in Roman Britain, and an investigation of the lotus root.

Participants to the Symposium are drawn from many countries, so the remit of the papers is much broader than Europe or Britain alone.

The volume is uniform with preceding issues, and is fully illustrated in black and white.