Political and proprietorial interference in the food coverage of popular British newspapers between two world wars: A historical perspective

This chapter examines the food coverage of three middle-market British newspapers during the 1920s and 1930s and traces how newspaper food writers identified and responded to their readers’ concerns over taste, budget and variety in an impoverished nation emerging from war and food scarcity. As part of a national drive to forge closer ties between Britain and her Empire, patriotic housewives were encouraged to experiment with such new taste sensations as Jamaican rum and sultanas from Australia. In predominantly conservative newspapers, food columns became sites of international exchange as they introduced suburban housewives to guava jelly, avocadoes and other exotic ingredients. In addition, the proprietors of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and London Evening Standard, Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook, aspired to gain power and political influence through the substantial circulation of their papers. By reading these papers’ food coverage in the context of the turbulent social and political upheavals of the interwar years, this chapter identifies how proprietorial interference and the political ambitions of powerful men found their way into the lifestyles, larders and shopping lists of interwar British housewives. My findings conclude that there was no such thing as an innocent avocado or grapefruit in an interwar newspaper food feature.