Cometh the hour, cometh the book, and so Christmas brings us once again a tidal wave of titles relating to food and drink: cookbooks of seasonal dishes from around the world, never once to be consulted, and endless tomes of wine connoisseurship for all of us dedicated cheapskate consumers of Lidl and Aldi plonk. So the question is: are Thomas Tylston Greg’s Through a Glass Darkly and Henry Jeffreys’s Empire of Booze destined to last any longer than your turkey carcass and your festive case of supermarket Prosecco?
Both books are undoubtedly charming. Through a Glass Darkly is one of those books in the London Library’s ‘Found on the Shelves’ series, in which out-of-copyright curiosities are plucked from the obscurity of the library’s shelves, repackaged and presented as pocket-sized light reads perfect for a long commute or as something to relax with at weekends. At £4.99 they’re an absolute bargain. Other titles in the series include Cycling: The Craze of the Hour; On Corpulence: Feeding the Body and Feeding the Mind and A Woman’s Walk.
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