Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal

Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal Andreas Viestad, translated by Matt Bagguley Reaktion Books, pp. 240, £15 Farmer, restaurateur, critic, foodie activist, traveller (he’s worked in Zimbabwe as well as South Africa), cookery book writer, longtime TV...

Young Bloomsbury in love

Young Bloomsbury: The Generation that Reimagined Love, Freedom and Self-Expression by Nino Strachey Two Roads, £25, pp.348 It’s been a century since the heyday of the Bloomsbury Group and now Nino Strachey, a descendant of one of the key Bloomsbury families, has...

Truffle Peelings

Coffee HousePoliticsEconomyWorldCultureLifeMagazine Magazine Issue: 18 December 2021 More from Books Paul Levy Don’t be seduced by fake truffle oil this Christmas Rowan Jacobsen guides us through the varieties, from the Italian white Alba to the black summer truffle...

Love, Solace and Deadly Nightshade

There’s a bit of a hidden treasure, if not quite on my doorstep, then only an hour’s drive away towards the Cotswolds. Compton Verney is an historic manor and parish, with a Grade-I listed country house, redesigned by Robert Adam in the 1760s and landscaped by...

Down Mexico Way (with a detour to Italy)

I could not at first remember why I bore a grudge against the late Angela Carter. But a rapid search turned up, as its first item, a review in The London Review of Books for 24 January 1985, of The Official Foodie Handbook by Ann Barr and me. The piece is uninformed,...

Obituary Edward Mortimer

Edward Mortimer, foreign affairs journalist who became Kofi Annan’s speechwriter at the UN– obituary His ability to listen intently to opposing arguments contributed to the style of Annan’s leadership ByTelegraph Obituaries27 June 2021 • 10:00pm Edward Mortimer, who...