The Taste of War : World War Two and the Battle for Food

In World War Two, 19 million people died in the conflicts across the globe. Yet in those same years, more than 20 million died from starvation and malnutrition. In "The Taste of War", Lizzie Collingham shows how food - and its lack - was central to the war's causes and continuation. She explores how starvation was often a deliberate governmental policy, and reveals how the necessity of feeding whole countries leads to Pearl Harbour, Germany's invasion of Russia, and the Holocaust itself.

Lizzie Collingham is the author of Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj and Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, hailed by William Dalrymple as 'scholarly, accessible and above all utterly original'. Having taught History at Warwick University she became a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. She is now an independent scholar and writer. She has lived in Australia, France and Germany and now lives near Cambridge with her husband and daughter.