Novelists and film makers often struggle to find the right period details to anchor their work in a particular era. And when it’s a much mined time and place – London in WW2 for example – it often results in rolling out the same set of shorthand cliches. You know the drill – the air raid siren, a gas mask…
The sandwich was no comfort, it was a pale limp thing a long way from the déjeuner sur l’herbe of her imagination. . . . Recently she had bought a new book, by Elizabeth David — A Book of Mediterranean Food. A hopeful purchase. The only olive oil she could find was sold in her local chemist in a small bottle. ‘For softening…