Author Description

"From the nude acrobats who entertained dinner guests in ancient Greece to the quiet rituals of medieval monks, from Roman debauchery and excess to the restrained rigors of the Victorian dinner party, sharing a grand meal has always been a theatrical event. But feasts are also complex social phenomena - these celebrations have divided and united people; they have signaled peace, marriages, victories, alliances, coronations, and funerals." "Sir Roy Strong examines the evolution of feasts beginning in the ninth century B.C., when a Babylonian emperor discreetly invited seventy thousand guests for a ten-day celebration, and ending early in the twentieth, by which time feasts were diminishing in scale and grandeur. Always attuned to how these celebrations reflect the societies that hold them and to the way they mirror shifts in power and class, this illustrated book offers a history of grand eating."--BOOK JACKET.