Panikos Panayi

Panayi attracted global attention when he suggested in 2004 that traditional British fish and chips had foreign origins.[2]

Panikos Panayi was born in a Greek Cypriot family which migrated to Britain.[3] He is a cultural historian. He has worked at De Montfort University, Leicester since 1990 and became professor of European history there in 1999.[4] He writes on the social history of food and immigration. His books have been translated into German, French, and Japanese.[1]

In 2004 he attracted press attention, and was listed under "Know your enemy" on an extreme rightwing forum, by noting that a central element of English cuisine, fish and chips, had foreign origins, since fried fish was Jewish while chips were most likely French. Similarly, ice cream was brought to Britain by Italian street vendors in the 19th century. In his view, the popular perception that food is tied to national identity is wrong; instead, the food people eat indicates the integration of cultures.[5][6] The global[2] press reaction included the Financial Times's "Kosher French Connection with Fish and Chips", and the Daily Star headline "Le Great Breetish Feesh and Cheeps: it's Frog Nosh Claims Prof",[7] which according to the historian Stuart Hilton triggered the hostile reaction from extreme rightwing political parties.[8]

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, reviewing Spicing up Britain in The Independent, stated that "Panikos Panayi has written extensively about migrants. His books surprise and gratify, draw readers into the alternative history of this mongrel nation [of Britain], unmade and remade by waves of outsiders", including German, Italian, and Spanish migrants. She found however that the style and language were turgid and indigestible, and that parts that should have been fascinating were "served up unappetisingly."[9] Times Higher Education wrote of the same book that Panayi avoided the trap of over-easy ethnic generalisation, and concluded that "If Panayi has an agenda, it is to wake up ignorant Brits, to make them realise how central immigrants have been to the development of the UK's economy and culture in the last century and a half."[2]

The English Historical Review described An Immigration History of Britain as an excellent synthesis of scholarship on immigrants' experiences.[10]

Panayi has been an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the University of Osnabrück at times between 1991 and 2014. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.[4]