Lord Tebbit is perhaps the only politician ever to have written a cookbook, The Game Cook, thanks to a chance conversation in his favourite butcher's shop. Lord Tebbit recently agreed to record a conversation with Anne Dolamore on video for Talking of Food, on how he came to write it. Following their conversation, he recorded two extracts from the book.

Honey from a Weed is a passionate record of the life of Patience Gray with her sculptor husband in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia. Avena Mansergh-Wallace reads three extracts for us.

Anne Sedgwick reads 'The recipe: the dish that saved my bacon' from The Village in the Valley, by Corinna Sargood.

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'.

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". Lady Jekyll, as she became, first published Kitchen Essays in The Times, "in which she was persuaded to pass on some of the wit and wisdom of her rare gift for clever and imaginative housekeeping".  Helen Garlick reads a few of her favourite extracts...

Olia Hercules has single-handedly put Ukrainian cuisine on the gastronomy list. She reads three extracts from her latest Book, Summer Kitchens: Recipes and Reminiscences from Every Corner of Ukraine.

Allegra McEvedy reads some of her favourite extracts from Claudia Roden’s latest book, Med.

When a friend told Alec Lobrano about an editorial job at “Women’s Wear Daily” in Paris, he went for it, even though he knew little about fashion. But it took him to Paris, where he had always wanted to live, and in Paris he began to learn about French food …