Julia Keay
Pungent Unguents
Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination
By Paul Freedman
Yale University Press 275pp £20 order from our bookshop
All too often academics writing on their specialist subjects end up either boring their readers or intimidating them. Paul Freedman, Professor of History at Yale University, proves that it doesn’t have to be that way. He wears his scholarship lightly, and has written an account of the impact of spices on the history, geography, economics, health and eating habits of medieval Europe that is as entertaining as it is informative.
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