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21/05/2013

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Food Programme

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Food Memoir

Duration:
25 minutes
First broadcast:
Sunday 06 December 2009

Food Memoir has been a growing trend in food writing in recent years. The combination of food writers' recollections and relevant recipes has proved a hit with countless readers. Simon Parkes explores this trend and asks why it's so popular. He talks to Josceline Dimbleby, who is in the middle of writing her own food memoir, Italian food writer Anna del Conte talks about Risotto with Nettles and Yasmin Alibhai Brown discusses The Settler's Cookbook, both published in 2009.

In the studio, Kathryn Hughes, biographer of The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton, and journalist, novelist and critic John Lanchester discuss the genre and dissect some of the new and not-so-new publications.

What attracts established food writers to this literary style? How difficult is it to get right? Do the recipes get in the way of a good story, or is it the other way round? What works and what doesn't?

  • Books

    Orchards in the Desert by Josceline Dimbleby will be published in September 2010.

    Risotto with Nettles by Anna Del Conte published by Chatto & Windus, ISBN: 978-0-701-18098-0.

    The Settler's Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown published by Portobello Books, ISBN-10: 1846270839, ISBN-13: 978-1846270833.

    The Short Life & Long Times of Mrs Beeton by Kathryn Hughes published by HarperPerennial, ISBN-10: 1841153745, ISBN-13: 978-1841153742

    Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger by Nigel Slater published by HarperPerennial, ISBN-10: 1841154717, ISBN-13: 978-1841154718.

    The Art of Eating by MFK Fisher published by John Wiley & Sons, ISBN-10: 0764542613,
    ISBN-13: 978-0764542619

    Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A.J.Liebling published by North Point Press,ISBN-10: 086547236X, ISBN-13: 978-0865472365

    Apricots on The Nile by Colette Rossant published by Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-0-7475-5816-3

Broadcasts

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A selection of food and drink programme highlights.

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  1. Image for Food Programme

    Food Programme

    Provenance and pleasure, history and health - Radio 4's weekly look at food. Making sense of food,...

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