In this series, the charismatic and enthusiastic historian John Dickie takes us on a romp through Italy’s past to reveal how much of it was actually shaped by its food. John will travel the length and the breadth of Italy to uncover tales of woe and ambition at the dinning table, of creative one-upmanship and scheming in the kitchen, of unbridled violence in the banquet hall and misery at the food stall.

We will travel back to the early days of the Roman Empire and show how bread could topple regimes. We will reveal the true origins of pasta, and the crucial role that a simple plate of maccheroni has often played in taming the mob. We will show how, in the Renaissance, lavish cuisine could determine a papal election, and how a banquet could mean life or death for an aristocratic dynasty. We will demonstrate how public food spectaculars akin to gladiator games held many Italian cities in thrall in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We will tell the story of how pizza was viewed as both disgusting and potentially life-threatening when it was invented. We will uncover why Mussolini wanted everyone to eat rice, and how an American doctor put Italian food on its way to conquer the world.