How does cheese fare in literature? References to people eating cheese abound, but most are without any embellishment. Where are the descriptions of cheese, the celebrations of cheese? Apart from Giles Milton’s Edward Trencom’s Nose, here are some extracts, but if you know of any more, do let us know, so that we can include them.

In the first part, Helen includes extracts from Laurence Durrell’s Avignon Quintet, from Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and from a short story by MFK Fisher.

For the second part, Helen chooses extracts from Just William by Richmal Compton, the poem This is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams and a food-related parody, and another extract from Livia by Laurence Durrell. 

Extracts from The Leopard by Giuseppe Lampedusa, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert are Helen's choices for the third part.

In Part 4, Helen introduces us to Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton Paterson and The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch.

In Part 5, Helen gives us an extract from Time Regained, Le temps retrouvé, the last volume in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, and Seamus Heaney's poem Oysters. 

Part 6 of Helen's Food in Literature series is a single extract from American Pastoral by Philip Roth.

In part 7, Helen takes us to what she calls "Anglo-Indian horrors, with extracts from E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, and London Fields by Martin Amis.

Part 8, is dedicated to turtle soup. Helen starts with the famous poem from Alice in Wonderland followed by an extract from Pentimento by Lillian Hellman. She continues with recipes for both Mock Turtle Soup and real Turtle Soup from The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, and for Consommé Fausse Tortue from Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll.

In Part 9 of Food in Literature, Helen Brings us excerpts from The Gate of Angels, by Penelope Fitzgerald, and the short story The Cut Glass Bowl by Scott Fitzgerald in Babylon Revisited.

Part 10 of Helen's excursion through Food in Literature includes extracts from The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann and extracts from Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler.

Part 11 of Food in Literature brings together three extracts from Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens.

In Food in Literature part 12, Helen gives us extracts from Expiation by Elizabeth von Arnim, The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope, As They Were by MFK Fisher, and a further extract from Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens. All four extracts concern butlers or waiters.

Part thirteen starts with Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. The novel won the Booker Prize in 2020. It is a masterpiece and should become a classic, that will be read a hundred years from now.

The Sandwich: in this article in the Food in Literature series, Helen Garlick brings us the sandwich, with extracts from The Cold Table by Helen Simpson, The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott, Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll, from With Bold Knife and Fork by MFK Fisher, Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers, and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.

Part 15 begins with extracts from Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, in which the heroine has a TV cookery show. That is followed by A Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester.

Georgette Heyer and Bruce Chatwin have nothing in common, save that in these extracts from two of their novels there is a common theme, that gourmet food served in grand surroundings can be deeply depressing if the company and the mood are unsympathetic.

In Part 17 of Food in Literature, Helen brings us extracts from two murder mysteries, The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald and Felicia’s Journey by William Trevor, in which food is used to establish character.

In the second set of extracts for winter and Christmas, Helen has chosen: the Christmas Eve at Mole’s house in The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Graham; Harriet Pringle’s first banquet in The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning; and A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.

Josceline Dimbleby visited Talking Of Food to record a reading from Orchards in the Oasis, her book of recipes, travels and memories.

Before the recording started, she talked to Helen Garlick about the book and their conversation ranged  from Josceline’s earliest food influences and cooking in a London bedsit to a shared love of American brown paper grocery bags and MFK Fisher.