4th Estate

Matthew Fort was educated at Eton College, Roedean School, the University of Lancaster and the University of Pennsylvania. He has a BA (Hons). He has been a keen cook for most of his adult life. For twenty years he worked as a copywriter and creative director for a variety of advertising agencies. In 1986 he was invited to write a column about food in the Financial Times Saturday Review. In 1989 he shook the dust of advertising off his feet to become Food & Drink Editor of the Guardian, a post he still holds.He wrote a cookery column for the Illustrated London News for one year, and another for Esquire for five years. He has also written for Vanity Fair, the Observer, the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Telegraph, Business, Country Living, Country Homes & Interiors, Decanter, The Field, ES Magazine, Cuisine et Vins de France, Bon Appetit and Waitrose Food Illustrated.He was Glenfiddich Food Writer of the Year and Restaurateurs’ Writer of the Year in 1991, and Glenfiddich Restaurant Writer of the Year in 1992. He edited the Guardian Sausage Directory in 1992. In 1998 he published Rhubarb & Black Pudding, a book about the Lancastrian chef Paul Heathcote and the Ribble Valley in which Mr Heathcote’s Michelin-starred restaurant in situated. He is currently working on a book about Italians and their food, based on a prolonged trip by scooter from the tip of southern Italy to Turin. He lives in Stroud with his wife.