It was a warm day and he had a long way to go. He hadn’t gone more than half-way when a sort of funny feeling began to creep all over him. It began at the tip of his nose and trickled all through him and out at the soles of his feet. It was just as if somebody inside him were saying, ‘Now then, Pooh, time for a little something.’ A A Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926
Hunger is sharper than the sword. Beaumont and Fletcher, The Honest Man's Fortune II ii 1
Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what is human in us? George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast p40
In the land of opportunity there are 34 million people living in poverty. 20 million a day go hungry. 2 million are homeless. Here in the heartland of America there is great devastation. The family farmer, the backbone of America, is being driven off his land. Down and Out in America, 1986
1981 Belfast, Northern Ireland: The conflict in Northern Ireland seems to be just on and on in a relentless cycle of violence, and then suddenly in 1981 it took the strangest darkest most dramatic twist when Bobby Sands and 9 of his young comrades insisting they be recognised as political prisoners went on hunger strike. Bobby Sands: 66 Days, BBC 2017
‘The march in West Belfast was the first test of public support for this second republican hunger strike.’ ibid. television news
‘There was no-one to save us but the boys … At 18 and a half I joined the Provos.’ ibid. Sands
In 1920 Irish Republican Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, began a hunger strike against his imprisonment without trial by the British government. ibid.
After four years in the Long Kesh Internment Camp Bobby Sands was released in 1976. ibid.
By 1976 over 1,500 lives had been lost in the conflict. ibid.
When Bobby Sands returned in prison in 1976 special category status had been abolished. ibid.
‘The blanket protest was born.’ ibid.
‘There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed. ibid. Sands
Their Hunger Their Pain Our Struggle ibid. wall art protest mural
‘The body fights back sure enough.’ ibid.
The smaller you are the hungrier you get. Hannah Fry, Size Matters II: That Sinking Feeling, BBC 2018
Every year 15 million children die from hunger. Wolvoman80, Government and New World Order Corruption Exposed aka Planet Earth, Youtube 3.00.26
The number of lives lost due to hunger and starvation as a result of the lockdown may never be known. Covid 19: World in Danger, Discovery 2020
Two-fifths of the children are malnourished in London. Mark Thomas Comedy Product s2e2, Channel 4 1998
Hunger is hard to recognise in America. We know it in other places like Asia and Africa. But these children, all of them, are Americans. And all of them are hungry. Hunger in America, CBS 1968
Food is the most basic of all human needs … America is the richest country in the world … Serious hunger exists in many places in the United States. ibid.
30 million Americans are impoverished … 10 million Americans whether or not they are reached by federal aid are hungry. ibid.
Ted, if you had three wishes, what would they be?
Ted: Three wishes? I don’t know really. Well I suppose the first thing would be world peace. And then maybe an end to hunger. And er [dreams of being disco king] … more money for hospitals, that kind of thing. Father Ted s1e2: Entertaining Father Stone, Channel 4 1995
Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly. Richard Wright, Black Boy
The ‘Pandorama’ consisted of a stage-front made of painted cardboard and fixed on the front of a wooden box about three feet long by two feet six inches high, and about one foot deep from back to front. The ‘Show’ was a lot of pictures cut out of illustrated weekly papers and pasted together, end to end, so as to form a long strip or ribbon. Bert had coloured all the pictures with water-colours.
Just behind the wings of the stage-front at each end of the box – was an upright roller, and the long strip of pictures was rolled up on this ... ‘Our next picture is called ‘An Englishman’s ome’. ’Ere we see the inside of another room in Slumtown, with the father and mother and four children sitting down to dinner – bread and drippin’ and tea. It says underneath the pitcher that there’s Thirteen millions of people in England always on the verge of starvation.’ Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
He would enquire into the case and lay his application before the committee at the next meeting, which was to held on the following Thursday – it was then Monday.
Linden explained to him that they were actually starving. He had been out of work for sixteen weeks. ibid.
The case had been duly considered by the committee, who had come to the conclusion that as it was a ‘chronic’ case they were unable to deal with it, and advised him to apply to the Board of Guardians. ibid.
The majority of the people are in a condition of more or less abject poverty – living from hand to mouth. It is an admitted fact that about thirteen millions of our people are always on the verge of starvation. ibid.
A new weapon in this war for women’s rights: hunger strike. Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley, BBC 2018
Elon Musk gave a mysterious $5.7 billion donation weeks after he dared the UN to show him its plan for solving world hunger. Can Capitalism Solve World Hunger? Fortune online article, Youtube 18.51, Second Thought
Here in the US food insecurity affects at least 38 million people. ibid.
Everyone is just trying to maximise their profits and/or minimise their costs. ibid.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our successes. The fertile Earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of (hunger) must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must rot (if not sold at a profit) … and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath