What’s best for your liver?

British education has a lot to apologise for. Over the decades, our schools not only blocked their pupils’ access to literacy, numeracy and serious examinations. They perverted their taste in food. This was as true in the public schools as in the state system. Think of the liver we had to eat. Fried until it could have been used to sole a boot, but not enough to remove those evil-looking tubes. Where did that liver come from: mule, blaspheming Jew? By and large, the boys cleaned their plates; schoolboys will eat anything. But in those days girls were equally coarsely fed. Someone ought to write a PhD correlating the incidence of anorexia to the way that British girls’ schools served offal. I know females who still refuse to touch it, except in foie gras: stuff the geese.

Yet offal is delicious — and medicinal. Years ago, after a good dinner, I ran into Norman Stone.