Tag: Vegetarianism

Review | Vegetarianism: A History, Colin Spencer | Book of the Week

The history of evolution is reflected in the human diet. “What people eat is a symbol of what they believe,” writes Colin Spencer.

BSE or ‘mad cow disease’; ‘Frankenstein foods’; GM crops . . . the food on our plates and how it is reared, produced and sold is becoming an increasingly Big Issue and a contributing factor to why more and more people are espousing vegetarianism. There was a time when if you were a vegetarian it was considered kooky or cranky, but no longer. Colin Spencer’s comprehensive book, reissued in paperback for the first time in fifteen years, explores the psychology of abstention from flesh and attempts to discover why omnivorous humans at times voluntarily abstain from an available food. He begins in pre-history and ends in the present day.
 Continue reading Review | Vegetarianism: A History, Colin Spencer | Book of the Week

Interview | Colin Spencer | Author of the Week

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’ve been painting, drawing and writing , since I was a child, which means that I’ve been doing it for over seventy years. Paints and brushes cost money, so when I was in my early twenties it was cheaper to write, I was first published in a literary magazine aged 22 – The London Magazine – with a short story – Nightworkers.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
See above, I only felt alive when working, still do.

What books have had a lasting impact on you?
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood. Wuthering Heights (I first read it aged 10). War and Peace. Middlemarch. Madame Bovary. The great novels all go on echoing and singing throughout one’s life. Continue reading Interview | Colin Spencer | Author of the Week

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