Menestra de verduras often served in littles bowls in fashionable Madrid bars, but probabaly the best I have ever had was made for me by Raul Domingo, when I stayed with him and his family in the city. Raul is a history lecturer, his wife, Carmen, a photographer, lecturer and archivist, and their student daughter Livia is a jazz and classical violinist. The shelves of their home groan with incredible books and the walls are covered in extraordinary paintings, and when it comes to food, Raul is in charge of the kitchen and his cooking is excellent. While I was writing up recipe notes he brought me a Madrid tapa of fine crisps and escabeche mussels (see page 111) and then a little bowlful of this light, delicious, nutritious menestra.
Emergency Admissions isn’t really a book at all. Or maybe it’s two books.
I grew up in a bohemian family with one, two, or possibly three, mad, hard drinking parents (depended what day of the week it was) and people said I should write a book about that. Then years later as something of a contrast I ended up with my own children and working in the NHS emergency ambulance service, and people said I should write a book about that.
Only when the agent suggested it and I did a bit of psychoanalysis on myself did I realise they were actually the same book, and Emergency Admissions is the result. Read more…
The story and characters of Miss Treadway and her world came to me in a great burst, an avalanche really, as I sat beside an ill child – filled with Calpol and blissfully asleep – watching At Bertrams’ Hotel in the dull, winter days of 2014. Read more…
If you want to be a better person in 2017, please stop bullying people into eating breakfast. For a century, thanks to the food companies, we have supposed breakfast to be the most important meal of the day, a meal we should eat like a king.
International Youth Day marks a day to celebrate the contribution youths make to society, yet the experience of being ‘young’ varies so dramatically amongst individuals. Despite what many may wish, it isn’t the case that every young person has a stable environment to grow, develop and achieve his or her potential. The fact that young people are often deprived of those opportunities, through no fault of their own, is something that still shrouds me. Read more…
Up next, in this month’s Coming of Age theme, an extract from Bee Wilson’s First Bite. We are not born knowing what to eat; we each have to figure it out for ourselves. From childhood onwards, we learn how big a portion is and how sweet is too sweet. We learn to love broccoli – or not. But how does this happen? What are the origins of taste? And once we acquire our food habits, can we ever change them for the better? In this chapter, Bee tackles memory, and how our food memories hold emotional force year after year. Read more…
In my novel, Age of Consent, a newly teenaged girl is seduced by a man in his twenties through a process known as “grooming.” The idea of grooming is to create an emotional bond with a child that can then be used to foster a sexual relationship. I’ve experienced this process myself, back in the late 70’s when I was fourteen-years old. My husband, who was aged eleven when his abuser used him for sex, was also extensively “groomed.” Read more…
“A nice day in general; just enjoying myself. No particular thoughts, except perhaps I’d like to change my life.”
In 2001, two friends of mine, Professor Richard Grove and Dr Dido Davies, were mucking around in a building site when they discovered armfuls of notebooks scattered across the rubble in a skip. Some of the volumes had royal emblems stamped on the front. Others were military-issue journals. Read more…
