The Picnic Chronicles, Vol. IV: The Medieval Hunt Feast — Picnics for the Powerful
The word "picnic" does not exist yet.
We are somewhere in medieval England — let's say the early 1300s, a crisp October morning in a royal forest that stretches for miles in every direction. The frost is still on the bracken. The horses are standing in a wicker corral. The hounds are drinking from a stream. And on the grass of a woodland clearing, a feast is already being laid out.
Not a modest feast. Not a packed lunch. A proper spread: cold game from yesterday's hunt, joints of roasted meat, manchet bread — the finest white bread, made from the most painstakingly sifted flour, reserved exclusively for the lord — wine cooling in clay pots in a nearby spring, and ale for everyone else. Three tables, laid in order of rank: the lord and his closest companions at the large table, the principal huntsmen at a smaller one, and the valets, pages, and servants at a cloth spread directly on the grass.
The word "picnic" does not exist. But this is, beyond any reasonable argument, a picnic.
The Picnic Chronicles, Vol. III: Ancient Greece — When the Symposium Went Outside
Here is a thing about the ancient Greeks that nobody tells you.
They weren't particularly bothered about the food.
Not really. Not compared to the Romans, who built entire rooms facing the best garden view and developed a fish sauce so powerfully good it survived two thousand years and lives on quietly in your Worcestershire sauce. Not compared to the Egyptians, who packed food for the afterlife and hosted annual feasts beside the tombs of their dead.
The Picnic Chronicles, Vol. II: Ancient Rome — The Civilised Outdoor Feast
The Romans didn't just eat outside. They thought very hard about it. They had opinions about it. They wrote letters complaining about friends who didn't show up to it. They built entire architectural wings of their villas specifically for it, angled to face the garden, the sea, or the best view of the Apennine hills. They had rules about who sat where, which wine you mixed with how much water, and whether it was vulgar to eat lying down.
(It was not. Lying down was, in fact, mandatory. More on this shortly.)
The Picnic Chronicles, Vol. I: Ancient Egypt — The Original Outdoor Feast
You thought picnics started with Mrs Beeton and a wicker hamper, didn't you.
I did too. For a while.
Then I started pulling at the thread — really pulling — and found myself four thousand years back, standing on the west bank of the Nile, watching an entire city pack up food, cross a river by boat, and sit down to eat beside their dead.