Book of the Week: MAY WE FEED THE KING by Rebecca Perry — Short-listed for the 2026 Booker Prize

‘Perry combines the story of a reserved museum curator who recreates historical banquets, using a careful array of fake pies and pomegranates — with the story of a medieval king, reluctant to occupy the throne (and possibly unfit for it anyway). It’s a wonderfully enticing, and eye-opening, combination of themes, woven together with an extraordinary delicacy of touch. You can’t read May We Feed the King without reflecting on the fragile boundary between the present and the past. What’s the difference between historical fiction and historical fact? Can history ever be a safe place we can go to escape the present?’  —2026 Booker Prize judges’ citation

• Read an extract.

• Outside the genre.

• Leaving gaps.

• The colour of patience is grey.

• I found my king on the fifth day.

• Radical fiction today.

• Replica food and exercising the imagination.

• The Booker judges judge the book.

• A reading guide.

• Other books short-listed for the 2026 Booker Prize.