I was familiar with Annie Gray thanks to her work with "English Heritage" youtube channel and her wonderful enthusiasm about historical cooking recipes, but I was not aware that she was also book author, until I stumbled upon Podcast "Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society" where one whole episode was all about this particular book - this was not possible to resist so here I am.
The book is great fun, as it follows various stages of Victoria's life trough the food that was prepared and served for her. It is full of wonderful details and you can tell that Gray gets giddy with excitement as she explains that even at that time it was not uncommon that guests would steal the plates and cutlery (from Buckingham Palace, imagine that!) as a souvenirs. Tons of behind-the-scene informations and thankfully, Gray decided not to bother with history - there are enough biographies about Queen Victoria - her focus is exclusively a insider look into Queen's household, chefs, staff, cooking recipes, etc. Somewhere halfway trough, I suddenly got exhausted from all this cornucopia of research, but it says more about my lack of attention than about brilliant work of Annie Gray.
