Thursday 11th June | 2:30pm

Please note: This ticket alone does not count as admission to the site. Visitors must also purchase any admission ticket for this date to be granted entry. Season Ticket passes and Historic Houses passes are also accepted

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.

Explore the high-stakes political dining of the Kit-Cat Club, where Sir John Vanbrughs Castle Style architecture provided a literal fortress for Whig power and legendary toasts. From the Gothic drama of Lord Byrons wine-filled human skulls and the scandalous glitter of silver bought with bribes, to the visceral reality of Parson Woodfordes maggoty ham and drunken pigs, Amy explores the dining room as a pivotal 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.