A look at two original accounts of English eating and drinking habits, why we eat and drink the way we do now with three fantastic authors.

Join us at Track Brewing Co. taproom in Manchester for a discussion between authors Sivamohan Valluvan & Amit Singh (MUP) and Lewis Bassett (Verso) about their brand new books.

Their chat will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

Copies of both books will be on sale on the night.

Doors: 5:30pm

Slice Culture will not be operating, but attendees are welcome to order food to the venue.

About the books:

PUBS FOR THE PEOPLE

A heartfelt case for why the English pub still matters and how we can save it.

In Pubs for the people, Amit Singh and Sivamohan Valluvan offer a daring defence of the humble public house, waging battle against those who see the pub only as a poignant symbol of a bygone England.

Making a journey into the nation's living room, they blend tales of Singh's father - the founder of London's first 'Desi pub' - with a lively travelogue that carries them from a hipster nightmare in Shoreditch to an izakaya-inspired Eccles pub run by migrants from Hong Kong. Along the way, they take on private equity, yuppie gentrifiers and culture-war blowhards who use the pub as a prop for their rage-baiting patriotism.

Life today can seem lonelier, angrier and poorer than it did before. But as Singh and Valluvan show, the pub offers the inviting prospect of a more equal, sociable and comfortably multiracial England.

THE FULL ENGLISH

An English culinary odyssey revealing the hidden forces shaping the nation’s food, its dining habits—and its people What is English food?

The award-winning podcaster Lewis Bassett is a chef in search of an answer. Whether examining the recent invention of sourdough or the aristocratic assumptions informing the rewilding of cuisine, Bassett discovers the deep roots of English food culture in the peculiar meanderings and great events of English history. Part culinary adventure, part political analysis, The Full English is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this nation of eccentric eaters.

About the authors:

Sivamohan Valluvan is a sociologist at the University of Warwick. He is the author of The Clamour of Nationalism: Race and Nation in Twenty-First-Century Britain (2019). His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Renewal, Salvage, Red Pepper and Progressive Review.

Amit Singh is a sociologist at University College London. He is the author of Cancelled Futures: Class, Race, and Place in Post-Industrial Britain (2026). He would, in another life, have been a fourth-generation publican.

Lewis Bassett is a writer, chef, and host of the podcast The Full English, for which he was the recipient of a Guild of Food Writers award. He has written for Vittles, the Guardian, Novara Media, and the Financial Times.

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