Hooray! It's dinner time. ICONS invites you round for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, the feast that has become synonymous with the English nation. British beef may have had its troubles in recent years, but it has always been at the centre of our national story. In the 18th century, it was celebrated in song as part of our red-blooded heritage of liberty, so different from our neighbours on the continent, where they had only the thin gruel of tyranny to eat.

We turn to the pages of Hannah Glasse's cookery book of the era to find a recipe for what she calls Dripping Pudding to go with it, and sympathise with our distant prehistoric ancestors who had no idea that meat became a whole lot nicer when not eaten raw.