Adam Gopnik, author and writer for The New Yorker magazine, came to London in late November for the UK launch of his new book. He credits Fergus Henderson for unwittingly giving him the title, The Table Comes First, and the two of them met up at St. John Hotel where the conversation ran from subjects as diverse as farting cows and the worrying proliferation of square plates in France...
"Marguerite Patten gave me my first inspiration to cook." so says Gary Rhodes. "I had decided to do this lemon sponge for Sunday lunch one day. I remember turning it out at table and seeing everyone drool as this intense smell of lemon filled the room and the thick lemon sauce dripped down over the sponge." Nigel Slater writes of happy hours spent lost in her 'Cookery in Colour' as a boy. They were not the first and nor will they be the last to be inspired by this extraordinary woman.
Our full interview with Marguerite includes contributions from Brian Turner, Valentine Warner and her daughter, Judith Patten.
Started in 1871, Maison Bertaux still survives in its original premises. Such is the devotion to this wonderful pastisserie that one ex-Soho resident has been going there for over 60 years - even though he moved out of London 25 years ago.
The two Trinity movies were the first "Comedy Westerns" produced in Italy in the early 1970s starring Terence Hill as Trinity and Bud Spencer as Bambino, Trinity's older half-brother. Trinity has just won a large amount of money as a card-sharp and so they're taking themselves to the smart, members-only restaurant in town ... the result is ... watch and see.
Agnes Jekyll (1860-1937) was the supreme hostess: her house was described as "the apogee of opulent comfort and order without grandeur, smelling of pot-pouri, furniture polish and wood smoke". Helen Garlick reads a few of her favourite extracts...
César Franck's Panis Angelicus (Celestial Bread), sung by Mezzo-Soprano Olivia Shrive, was recorded at the Basilica of Sainte Clothilde in Paris. It was at this church that Franck became organist in 1858, a post he held until his death in 1890.
