Agricultural History Review, Volume 66 Part 2 (2018), p. 295

This wide-ranging account focuses on the contribution of the highly acclaimed Lord Woolton, a successful executive and later managing director of Lewis’s department store in Liverpool who, between 1940 and 1943, became infamous as the Minister of Food. It explores the way Woolton set about coordinating the activities of the Ministry to ensure that the nation was adequately fed at a time when imports of food – which Britain depended heavily on – were under attack from the Axis powers. The text, based on a plethora of primary sources, including new access to Woolton’s own diaries and those of his first wife Maud, makes a long overdue contribution towards filling a void in the literature.

It is somewhat of an exaggeration to claim, as the title implies, that the choice was between eggs and civil anarchy, social unrest, and in its wake, disillusionment with the war effort. The book makes a number of very pertinent points about the wartime shortage of eggs and the efforts made to ensure that this did not undermine support for the war effort. It provides a perceptive critique of the wartime egg collection policy and the opposition to the use of the ubiquitous, infamous and much reviled dried egg powder. Rather surprisingly, the author does not explore in more detail how the Ministry of Food misguidedly attempted to persuade the population that dried egg powder was the same as fresh eggs, and that their poor opinion of it was the result of the way they were mixing the powder prior to cooking it.

A sharper, more evaluative focus on the implications of the wartime strategy of expanding arable farming at the expense of livestock production – particularly commercial chicken production – would have provided a more convincing justification for the title. The precarious and often difficult relationship between the Ministry of Agriculture (which was responsible for coordinating production) and that of the Ministry of Food (responsible for coordinating distribution) is covered in a rather general way.

The text is particularly valuable in terms of its contribution to enhancing our understanding of Churchill’s mercurial relationship with Woolton and the difficulties they both faced in maintaining public support for the way they ran the war effort. It also provides a detailed insight into Woolton’s dealings with the press, explaining that he was the master of public relations and particularly astute in stressing the wartime achievements of the Ministry. The text reveals how Woolton was aware enough to direct his appeals to women, who were the main food provider utilizing a wide range of media including posters and broadcasts to disseminate his practical advice, combined with patriotic appeal. Sitwell’s analysis shows how Woolton was able to gloss over what were, on occasions, less salubrious aspects of his work and how he went to strenuous lengths to implement rather dubious plans to ensure that the nation was well fed.

As such, the book will be of considerable interest to a wide range of readers. It is written very much from the standpoint of a journalist rather than an academic, with footnotes or endnotes being absent. From the point of view of an academic who would like to be able to interrogate the sources for themselves, this is a matter of concern. The author provides many tantalizing insights into the nature of the wartime system of food control, the population’s disillusionment with the way the war effort was proceeding and the personality of many of the leading politicians. The text is complemented by an impressive selection of pertinent photographs to support the analysis.

The book contains its fair share of factual mistakes, the most glaring being on p. 102, when it claims that wheat was being sold for $85 a bushel. In a similar way, the wartime increases in the use of home-grown wheat for bread making, coupled with the increase in the extraction rate (the amount of flour produced from a fixed quantity of wheat), could have been more closely integrated with the development of the ‘national loaf’ which contained a much higher amount of bran.

In spite of these criticisms, which are relatively minor in nature, this is a text well worth reading for the insight it provides into the Woolton’s career and his vitally important contribution to saving the country from malnutrition, if not actual starvation, during the greatest conflict in the history of the world. The reader would be advised to be slightly sceptical of some of the assertions the author makes, given the absence of footnoted references. Overall, the book’s considerable merits significantly outweigh its shortcomings. It constitutes a valuable addition to not only enhancing our understanding of how to ensure that the nation is adequately fed in wartime but also raises many pertinent nutritional issues about ways of maintaining a healthy balanced diet in peacetime.