Seeds of wisdom and dissent

George Orwell was deeply hostile to vegetarianism. Vegetarians were of ‘that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking to the smell of “progress” like bluebottles to a dead cat’. And before the days of South Indian restaurants in London, one had only to go to a vegetarian eating establishment to see that he had a point. It wasn’t only the beards that wilted (to quote Orwell again): it seemed that nut rissoles had an existentially wilting effect on those who subsisted on them. Of course, one might have mistaken cause for effect.

Tristram Stuart’s very, indeed excessively, long and somewhat shapeless history of vegetarian thought in Europe does not entirely dispel this impression. Vegetarianism seems to have attracted resentful cranks and prigs from the beginning of its revival in the 17th century. They were mainly radical political idealists, but, as we now appreciate, such idealism is likely to lead to more brutality and mass murder than mere cynicism.