Yesterday I went to a delightful memorial service for Clarissa Dickson Wright who died just over a year ago. I am sure that many of you will remember her from her Two Fat Ladies cookery programmes – but she was so much more than just a rather splendid fat cook!!
Amongst other things she was that best of historians – one who was not only immensely erudite, with a vast range of facts at her beck and call, but one who could make history intimate, entertaining and engaging. I remembered that I had reviewed her History of English Food which came out in 2011 and went back to read my review. Now I can scarcely wait to go and pull the book off the shelves and reread it. Do please at least check out the review but, far better, read the book! (You can buy it here.)
And then you might be tempted to go on and read her autobiography, Spilling the Beans. As I said when she died, I normally loath ‘celebrity’ autobiographies but hers was such an extraordinary life and she retails it with such honesty and such humour, that you are gripped from cover to cover.