Food of the Cods: How Fish and Chips Made Britain

The story of Britain's fish and chips obsession.

'Gray is a master of observing and amplifying the things we love.' The Times

A richly entertaining celebration of Britain's national dish and its iconic neon houses.

There is a corner of every town and city in Britain where the air is tangy with vinegar and thick with the scent of frying. It is almost impossible not to follow this mesmeric vapour trail, fuelling a nostalgic rush of parents across the land declaring 'Chippy tea!', followed by the golden anticipation of the chip shop queue.

In this lively and relatable book, acclaimed author Daniel Gray ponders the magic of chippies and rejoices in the delights they have sprinkled among us over the last 150 years. He investigates the social - and sociable - history of fish and chips, revealing the shared truths that bind us to this edible institution and its charismatic outlets.

By travelling to chippies across Britain, the celebrated and the unheralded, he will show how many of the themes that shape our country are drizzled in vinegar. Chippies have emancipated working class women, brought equality for immigrants, amplified regional and class differences and shaped local and national identity.

Gray's journey - from Dundee to Devon via South Shields, Oldham, Bradford, Bethnal Green, the Rhondda Valley and elsewhere - gets under the skin of today's fish and chip nation to answer some of the most pressing questions...

Where is the 'scraps border'? Tea, Vimto or dandelion and burdock: which drink makes the best accompaniment? Do fish and chips taste better when eaten in the open air? And what do regional variations - Wolverhampton's orange chips, London's wallies, Hull's chip spice - tell us about their locales?

This mouth-watering book is as much about who we are as what we eat.