The Table | 2 August 2008

At a House of Commons cocktail party I suddenly noticed a friend’s face contorted like ‘The Scream’ of Edvard Munch. Could it be yet more bad news for Labour? No, she was being offered a plate of smoked salmon, probably her thousandth munch for the year. I entirely sympathised; the stuff usually served up is fatty and tasteless. But now that the fishing season is upon us, you can do something about it.

Salmon was once so plentiful in the British Isles that a medieval journeyman’s contract specified it would be on the workshop in-house menu no more than three times a week. In modern times, c.1960, salmon stocks began to be fished out; in place of the angler landing salmon on its home voyage to spawn, dragnet operations now occurred at sea; the rivers themselves became lethally polluted. Thus the birth of the fish farm. Not all, but most, are nefarious.