This book is the eleventh volume in the series ?Food and Society? produced by the Leeds Symposium on Food History. Prospect produced last year?s proceedings, Feeding a City: York; this book is uniform with that. There are plentiful black and white illustrations throughout; the book is fully indexed and annotated. BAPTISM, MARRIAGE, CHILDBIRTH, DEATH: these are the milestones of life, invariably marked by a feast or comforting rituals founded on food and drink. Some of these habits flourished, then died away ? think of the cups of wine passed around the gossips gathered at a lying in; others have gone on to be industries in their own right ? the wedding cake, which has slowly but surely evolved from the giant flat discs of bride cake illustrated in the sensational full-colour cover of a fête in Bermondsey by Hofnagel in the seventeenth century, to the many-tiered and icing-bedaubed monuments of today.