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...

Edward Trencom has bumbled through life, relying on his trusty nose to turn the family cheese shop into the most celebrated fromagerie in England.

Author Giles Milton has chosen two extracts to read.

 

Prue Leith has led an extraordinarily rich and varied life.  Born in South Africa, she left for France as a young woman, worked as an au pair and studied at the Sorbonne.  But it was in London that she enrolled at the Cordon Bleu and became a caterer. She opened Leith's restaurant in the swinging sixties and it quickly established itself as the place to be seen.  Her clientele included all of the movers and shakers of the day. Six years later came the cookery school which still bears her name.  Successful business woman, newspaper columnist, government advisor, novelist, she also sustained a happy marriage and raised two children.

Here, for the very first time, Prue can be heard reading extracts from her autobiography.

Relish: My Life on a Plate is searingly honest, tender and very funny.

 

 

Agnes Jekyll's gift for friendship and organisational skills made her an excellent hostess.

Helen Garlick reads three more extracts from Kitchen Essays, published in The Times in 1922, in which Lady Jekyll passes on 'some of the wit and wisdom of her clever and imaginative housekeeping'.

Willie Fowler's Countryman's Cooking was written for men.

W.M.W. Fowler joined Bomber Command in WW2, flew Lancasters, was shot down by the Germans and ended up in Stalag Luft 3.  When he returned to Cumbria after his release in 1945,  he took to farming mink, then daffodils, while rediscovering the delights of hunting, shooting and fishing, not to mention cooking, eating and womanising.  We have three extracts read by Rupert Baker to whet the appetite...

"Scholarly, playful, idiosyncratic and witty, Aldo Buzzi's The Perfect Egg is an excursion into the food that has obsessed, provoked and intrigued the author through his life."

 

 

The experiences of a young trainee cattle market auctioneer from 1954 to 1960;  a unique memoir of a bygone time.

 

The author, John Shrive, reads  "In the Beginning",  relating his first encounter with Store Pigs... and more.

 

 

 

 

Alexandre Dumas, best known for such classic novels as The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo and Man in the Iron Mask, wanted to be remembered for a far more esoteric book.  Food was his real passion in life and his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine was the one book the great novelist cared about.  Mark Hilton reads extracts from Alan and Jane Davidson's translation,  Dumas On Food.

 

Adam Gopnik's The Table Comes First is a witty meditation on life and food.  It is subtitled Family, France and the Meaning of Food.  Jesse Thompson reads two extracts here.

You can also see Adam Gopnik in conversation with Fergus Henderson, who unwittingly gave him the title for his book, in our Watch section.

 

Screenwriter, novelist, award winner, journalist, playwright… just a few of the words that describe the literary careers of James and Kay Salter.  They are also responsible for one of the most delightful musings on food in print, Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Day Book published by Knopf.

Whether writing about Peanut Butter, The Sandwich, Samuel Johnson's appetite for good eating or The Siege Of Paris this quirky collection is unequalled in its information, erudition and utter originality.

Extracts from the book are read by their son, the actor Theo Salter.  Enjoy!