Our events are recorded and on-demand to ticket holders for one month. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit UK museums, galleries and other arts-based organisations.
James Gillray, A Voluptuary Under the Horrors of Digestion, 1792. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Step back into the 1700s and into the most important room in Britain: the country house dining room. In this engaging talk, Dr Amy Boyington pulls back the velvet curtains on the ‘theatre of the feast’ to reveal how the Georgian elite used architecture, art, and an almost religious devotion to excess to cement their social standing.
From the Gothic drama of Lord Byron’s brandy-filled human skulls and the scandalous glitter of silver bought with bribes, to the visceral reality of Parson Woodforde’s ‘maggoty ham’ and drunken pigs, Amy explores the dining room as a high-stakes engine room of society. Discover the rigid choreography of Service à la Française, the ‘Frenchified’ culinary rivalries of the Napoleonic wars, and the legendary after-dinner rituals where port was poured and political alliances were forged. Join us as we peel back the gilding to reveal a world of impossible tensions - where the line between supreme refinement and raw, gluttonous reality was as thin as a silver-handled blade.
The Country House Dining Room by Amy Boyington is published by Yale University Press (26 May 2026). Ticket holders will receive a code for 20% off when purchasing the book via their website (includes free P&P, UK orders only).
This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live with Q&A, or on-demand for one month afterwards. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends.