Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's best-selling history magazine.

I'm Ellie Cawthorne.

Welcome to our new four-part mini-series, in which we'll be looking back at festive food from down the ages. From the fairly revolting to the downright delicious and sadly forgotten dishes that have

graced our Christmas tables over the centuries. I'm joined in this culinary adventure by Annie Gray,

food historian and the author of At Christmas We Feast, Festive Food Through the Ages. And for our

final episode today, we're taking a look back on festive food

in the 20th century, from the suspect dishes made under World War II rationing to Fanny Craddock

and joyful post-war creations coated in piped green mayonnaise. In this episode, we're going to look

at Christmas in the Second World War and also in the post-war era.

We might need to break those into two separate things.

To start us off, what would sum up Christmas during the Second World War?

A sense of yearning, I think.

A sense of Christmas being the thing you really, really need to get you through the year.

And a sense that as long as you manage something, then actually it's all okay.

Did people want to celebrate Christmas during the Second World War? Was there a sense, as you say,

if it's something to look forward to rather than it being deemed in not good taste, for example.

I think the second one war actually made Christmas far more than the Victorian era

because Christmas became a real focal point every single year during the war.

And indeed afterwards, because of course rationing went on until 1954.

The Ministry of Food and various magazines exhorted people to make the most of the ration. There

was extra sugar, there was extra dried fruit, there were extra suet. There was this sense that

Christmas was a thing. And it wasn't considered in bad taste because actually there was a sense

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