Hello there.Welcome back to the British Food History Podcast.I am Dr Neil Butchery, food historian and chef. Now, last episode I spoke with four guests.Sam Bilton, Annie Gray, Ivan Day and Jill Norman.
All about Jane Grigson and her wonderful book, English Food, which is 50 years old this year, 2024.Thanks for all of the great feedback about the episode.By the way, it's really well appreciated.
I worked really hard on it and I'm glad there's so many fans of Jane and her work. I'm continuing the Jane Grigson theme and do I have an episode for you because I am talking with food writer and broadcaster Sophie Grigson, Jane's daughter.
I'll keep my news for the end except to say that there will be a special Halloween Zoom event with myself and Alessandra Pino who is of course a friend of the show and my co-host on A is for Apple, an encyclopedia of food and drink.
There's also news of some in-person plum pudding workshops in Worcester.So make sure you listen right to the end if you're interested in those. But anyway, back to today.
Yes, this is the second part of a three-part series of episodes about Jane Grigson.Why?Well, she's the person who taught me everything, basically.
Not just how to cook, but to reconnect with our traditional foods and recipes and how we can keep them alive and relevant today.She's also a wonderful writer.And whilst I admit I cannot hold a candle to her in that respect,
I very much look up to her as a mentor.In 2007 I decided to cook every single recipe in English Food.450 recipes in all.And I blogged every single one on the blog that I named Neil Cooks Grigson all those years ago.
And everything else has come from that project. Well, I contacted Sophie to see if she would come on to talk about, well, not just English food, but Jane as a writer, cook, person and mum and role model, of course.
Sophie Grigson is an award-winning food writer, broadcaster, teacher and cook.She has written many cookery books herself and hosted several TV shows.She moved to Puglia in 2019 and her most recent work very much reflects this.
Most recently there's been her Slice of Italy program which you can see on Discovery Plus and or Food Network UK and her most recent book Exploding Tomatoes and Other Stories The Food and Flavours of Southern Italy came out this year 2024.
Now I have to admit I was a little bit nervous before this interview but We had a great time, and I'm sure you're going to love listening to this episode.I had such good fun editing it, I have to say.
We talk about what inspired Jane to write three editions of English Food, why I chose Jane's book to cook from, Singin' Hinnies, Sussex Pond Pudding, and Jane's dislike of rhubarb, amongst many other things.
I'll be back at the end with news and information regarding this week's Easter eggs.But now, Jane Grigson with Sophie Grigson.It's wonderful to meet you, I have to say.I mean, it is quite surreal, this meeting.
There is something quite strange about meeting people that you only be aware of in the sort of, I don't know, in that ether out there.
Yeah, exactly.And with the sort of hobby core to the reason why I was doing all of this, I feel like I've very much done it in isolation, apart from my mates who I used to invite around.
Yeah, well, do you know what?Yes, they did.And I've got to say what amazing sports they were when I wheeled in lamb's head in brain sauce.
That really sips out your friends, doesn't it?And who come back for another meal?
That's it, and they would come back.And especially, you know, my friends in America, you know, because I mean, they don't know what a jam rolly polly is, nevermind anything else extreme.
So that was a penny that dropped where I just thought, hmm, maybe people might pay for this. And that's, I resigned from my job in St.Louis, Missouri, and I landed in the first week of August.Two weeks later, I did my first artisan market stall.
Because I thought if I stop, I'll chicken out.So I'm just going to do it as soon as I move back.And I haven't stopped.And it is, of course, all because of your lovely mum.
Well, how wonderful.She was a wonderful woman.So I'm delighted.She would have been, I can't think, she would have been so thrilled. to know what you were doing, and to have felt that she had some small part in what we're doing now.
It's crazy, because I think, well, actually, I was going to say she sort of held my hand throughout all this, but you know what?She didn't, actually.What she did, she was a very good coach.
And then she shoved me in the kitchen and left me to my own devices.And I've been talking to a couple of other people about this.And modern recipes today have too much detail,
And your mum often points out, you know, I don't know what medium your medium heat is.I don't know how thick your pan is.I don't know how good your oven is.This is what you need to look out for to tell you if something's ready.
I'm not going to say do this for three minutes, because it might not be done in three minutes.And that really helps, doesn't it?
I think it just does when people understand that.The way we write recipes has changed, even in the time I've been writing now.And even in that time, it's changed.And you're absolutely right.
In my mum's generation, reading her recipe, they're not as precise, but actually what they are is they tell you what you should be looking for.
And I think in all sorts of people, particularly, I guess, as with the rise of more uniform ingredients from supermarkets, where everything is sort of packaged to the nth degree, or it's all kind of sanitised.
Well, now people want, you know, they want to know, well, okay, I think people want to know, but I'm not sure if it's the actual person who's sitting there with the recipe, or whether it's the editor at the magazine or the publisher, but somebody there wants things to be precise.
And you can't do that with cooking.Ingredients just aren't like that.You know, and I can cook a recipe that I cook all the time, and I can cook it one time,
and it's perfect and it turns out a bit different another time that there's all kinds of little variables starting with the actual ingredients themselves but why okay one of the things that i'm interested in is why well just why i mean why did you choose english food and yeah it's just fascinating why well because i didn't know anything about it
I think I seem to move towards... I'm a bit of a butterfly I think with interests and what I like to do is I like to go towards what I don't know rather than go somewhere where it's comfortable.
familiar and it's pure chance my friend Evelyn, hello Evelyn if you're listening, bought me a pack of penguin books.
There's a couple of Elizabeth Davids in there, Rick Stein's English Fish Cookery, Nigel Slater's and she bought me it for Christmas and I said thank you very much and I stuck it on the shelf unopened for about a year. And I eventually picked it out.
And this is my original copy.Look at the state of it.
And every recipe, I've checked it.So herrings and oatmeal, that was number 386.And I looked at it and suddenly two hours had disappeared. And I just thought, this is amazing.This is amazing.
I did cook a bit of British food, but it was, I was really interested in Italian, really interested in Asian, especially Thai.And I thought, well, do you know what?I don't know actually that much.So apart from making okay pastry, that was it.
So then I said, I was going to do it.My friends talked me into writing it as a blog.And then I got obsessed and I'm still obsessed now.
That's a good answer, a great answer.I think you're not alone though.It is one of the weird things about how we British look at our own food and cooking and we don't value
what there has been in our history, in our historical food, and that's a real shape.
The only thing that really bugs me that I've noticed recently, that if you go to, if you're in, well I live in Italy and I've spent lots of time in France and you know I travel a bit, other airports
You know, these huge mega airports, which now try and rape your money, your last penny out of your pockets as you go through, which I really hate.
But everywhere else you go, I think I really noticed when I was in Schiphol, they have stalls or stands selling their food, selling their specialities and their things that are special.When you come out of Heathrow or Gatwick, it's nothing.
It's almost nothing saying, hey, we make amazing cheese. there might be a few, a few tins of Walker's shortbread.
But you know, and I think one, for one reason, I was coming back here and I wanted to get some cheddar for friends and to bring back, because it's the one thing that the British expats here really miss is cheddar.
And I just searched around the airport and I eventually, right at the end, found one small stand where they had some cheddar.Any other country, they're proud of their produce, they want you to come and taste it.And we're just kind of like, mm, mm.
And it happens at every level.You know, you see sort of menus for royal banquets because somebody has visited, and it's still all French.
Where's the nice Lancashire hot pots or sirloins, that kind of stuff.
But I guess that's the reason why Jane wrote that first book, wasn't it?Because she'd seen We'd Lost the Connection.
I think totally.And she'd seen also when she wrote it, it was in the 70s, early 70s.And already by then, there was this huge change in the way we shop and shop for food and cook and eat, I think was taking place.
And that post-war change, the advent of the supermarkets and the increasing dominance of the supermarket.I mean, I can remember going with my mum,
And I'm not quite sure, I did want to look this up, I'm not quite sure what date it was, but going with it, when the first Sainsbury's opened in Swindon.
So my parents lived, we lived in Wiltshire, in a little village about nine miles outside Swindon.And the advent of the Sainsbury's was a big thing.I guess that was probably 70s?60s, 70s I would think.Yeah, and that was the beginning of a change.
I think she was really witnessing that change. and the way we eat and the demise of things like our cheese, you know, the amount of cheese making and the amount of local producers.
Gosh, in the 1970s, farmhouse cheese was basically extinct, wasn't it?In Britain?
Yeah, pretty much, pretty much.So that's, you know, that was at 25 years, or 20, no, not 25, it was a winter rationing fish in the 50s, so 20 years.
I had just seen this complete turnaround in the way we were looking at food, shopping, and then you had all the 70s convenience food.
So I think she was motivated by that. And that was something that really did make, I mean, she didn't start out to be a food writer.There was no, she didn't mean to be a food writer, like you really.
No, that wasn't her motivation, but she found when she kind of connected to food and realized that food is about far more than just calories.It's about, it's about history.It's about culture.It's about humanity.It's about art.
I mean, all of these things,
Some of her references, cookery book references, or maybe literary references, are very obscure, but she makes them so relevant.It's quite a skill.
It is a huge skill, actually.And, yeah, and there wasn't... I mean, obviously, there were very good food licenses around, but it was something that she did... almost came out of a vacuum.
really I mean she she was a writer and she'd studied English at university and she'd been researching she'd worked with my father who was very very um literature minded and was a writer so I guess we had that but somehow this way of writing her perspective on food emerged out of that background.
Gosh that's a pair of role models to have isn't it to look up to?
I tell you what, I never intended to follow in either person.I studied maths at university.Maths was great because you have a beginning, a middle and an end.
One solution, there's only one way to go.
When you're writing, there is not a solution.
Oh, how funny, I didn't know that.
Yes, that was my teenage rebellion.
Against this worthy family.
Yeah, yeah.But they hooked you in eventually, did they?
Yeah, it kind of happened.I had to give in in the end.
Well, it's a family business.
It is, it is, absolutely.
He seemed to have been quite a big influence on your mum, particularly at the beginning.
I think he seemed to be, I'm sure very politely, but seemed to kind of give her a good shove into getting a first book out there and her first pieces of writing to do with food.
Absolutely.And he was very supportive in many ways.He was also quite critical.
And I know, I remember, I used to remember Sunday mornings when he observed, she was writing for The Observer, and Sunday mornings were a slightly tense affair because she, although she would discuss articles, what she was writing, while she was writing,
He never read them until he saw them in The Observer.So there was this kind of slight apprehension, would he approve?
Did he get his red pen out like a teacher?
Not quite.I think she was a wonderful writer.But he was very supportive, actually.And I mean, hey, he was getting fed very well.I mean, why wouldn't he be supportive?
Well, you know, I wanted to ask you about this, because I have a very romantic idea in my head of you and your mum pottering around, or your mum with her nose in Robert Mays, the accomplished cook or something, trying to make some weird cheesecake, and having you and your dad, this constant sort of, I don't know, conveyor belt of this amazing and random stuff coming up.
I mean, that's kind of what I think.It's like, oh, what am I going to get today? That's going to appear on the dinner table today.
Yes, it was.It was fairly like that.I mean, when you sent me a list of possible questions, and one of the questions, or things you wanted to talk about, one of them was what I remember, my mum's process of writing.
And I sat there and thought about it, and I can tell you what her office was like and who the kitchen was like.
I'm not sure I know how she actually went from breathing the accomplished cook to English food and I don't know quite how I think that when I test recipes and how I do it and I write them down and then I test them and I rewrite it.
I don't ever remember her saying for instance or having on the kitchen table a sheet of a typed sheet of a recipe that she was working on.She always seemed to just know what she was doing.
I'm sure that's not how it was, and as a child, I probably just didn't notice these things. Anyway, she did, and we did get a huge range of dishes, but there were family favourites appeared again and again.
She's expecting us to cook those things, though.I mean, it's very rare.She'll sometimes put something as an example of, oh, isn't this interesting?Like Hannah Glass's Yorkshire Christmas pie, which is a ridiculous thing to make.
But, you know, aside from those, you know, she wants you to do the lamb's head and brain sauce, and she spends a good time telling you to get over yourself. She says it more politely than that, but that's what she means.
And really helps you connect, because it's the most democratic cookery book I've ever read.Because, I don't know, roast grouse gets the same billing as Lancashire hot pot, rice pudding, or whatever, kidney soup.
You can decide whether you're going to cook it or not, but she's not going to. say something's good or bad or better than the other at all.
Absolutely, and she didn't have that sense of the hierarchy of foods.Well, okay, obviously she read and she was very aware of it, but in herself she didn't rate.
you know, one thing as being awful of being less of less importance than steak or fillet or whatever.And she, I mean, that was something that that comes through in her book.
There's not that idea of ignoring stuff because it's not good enough for a dinner party or not good enough for whatever occasions. You know, she's interested in food.
She likes, she likes food, which kind of is an obvious thing to say, but sometimes you read cookery books, or I read cookery books, I'm not sure that people actually really like food that much. they kind of like the idea of food.
And it had to look a certain way, and it'd be a certain style.Whereas my mum was just interested in what people ate now, what people ate a hundred years ago.
And she was as interested in what a peasant might be eating as she was in what the king might be eating.And that's, I think, you're absolutely right, that's very democratic.She didn't like rhubarb,
I was going to say, what does your mom have against rhubarb?I mean, this is what I've picked up from reading, conspicuous by their absence.Rhubarb, things like green beans.I think she doesn't like green beans.
I think she really does not like peanuts.
She doesn't like peanuts.She did like green beans.I think she did like green beans.Rhubarb, she struggled with.We had, in the end of our garden in the UK, in Wiltshire, there was a big rhubarb plant.
that thrives through neglect, as far as I can tell.And I used to quite like, you know, I used to like take a little bag of sugar and taking a rhubarb and dipping it in and eating it raw.I love it.She occasionally cooked it if she felt she had to.
So when she was writing her fruit book, she put rhubarb in, it's really good actually.
She could have got away with it because she could have said in the fruit book, I'm not putting it in the fruit book because it's actually a vegetable.And then when she did the vegetable book, she could have said, well, it's not in here because
We cook it as a fruit.She could have just not bothered.
But she wouldn't have done.
Of course she wouldn't have done.She wouldn't have done.No, indeed.
And I think she probably had had, when she was a kid, she probably had too many, too many fraught encounters with rhubarb that had been cooked without enough sugar in it and was, you know, teeth gritting.
Fuzzingly, horribly sharp.And I can understand that's not really the way to get everyone to like rhubarb.
That just fired off her introduction to her rice pudding recipe, because she says there, I think she mustn't have eaten rice pudding since she left school because it was so awful and mean and, you know, watered down.
And then she went off and baked one and just couldn't believe it.All these decades of not eating this amazing food.Aw.
Yeah.Well, that's part of the testament to what bad food in childhood does to you.Yeah.And she, you know, and that, and particularly that institutional
food fed to children, which, you know, and she was a child of the war as well, so she was away at school during the war, so, you know, not a good time, I think, to be learning about food.
And have, you know, rice pudding and rhubarb seen as a treat at the end of the meal.
Yeah, fair enough. What would you say are the best pieces of advice your mum gave you?Or maybe just by leading by example, I suppose, because sometimes advice is unsaid, isn't it?
Very much.Although there's one piece of advice that I believe actually came from my grandmother originally, which was if you see something on a menu that you don't know, that's what you should be ordering.
Always try new things.So that was, and don't be afraid of them.And so that was a really important bit of advice which I adhered to and which I made my children adhere to as well.
I was never aware of her teaching me to cook, but I was included in cooking.And the kitchen was very much the center of the household.And it was where, in the winter, it was where it was warmest.
We had, actually it wasn't an oven, it was a Rayburn, I think, but it was warm and snug and a place to hang out. And I just helped her cook.
And I think that she was also at various points, she was quite brave when she would, when I decided I wanted to cook something myself, she would give me the ingredients and she would go off to her room to work and let me at it.
And I think that actually takes a lot of bravery as a mother to do that. Who knows what you will come back to?Who knows what could go wrong?So she was always not too far away in case something was a disaster.
But she was never there saying, no, that's not how you should do it.No, you shouldn't do that.
I need to take some leaves out of Jane's book there, I think.It's not easy.
It's not easy.How old are your kids?
Oh, no, I don't have any kids.I'm just talking about my partner.
Oh, oh, well, that's also not easy.
Yeah, and I'm very difficult not to go in and say, this is how you should do it.I think she gave me a lot of confidence in cooking and encouraged me and didn't say no.I was incredibly lucky.
It's very easy, I think, when you cook and you've got kids or a partner, to see the kitchen as your domain and not want to be fussed when you're cooking something and kind of concentrate on it.
It's very hard to walk past that chopping board and pan, and just to not say, you're chopping them like that, are you?
Oh, it's so hard to do, or not to do, I mean.
I know, I feel it too.But I think as, you know, if you've got kids, you have to learn to do that.Yeah, yeah. That's one of the two best bits of advice she gave me.
I'm just, well, I mean, this is connected to if you see something on a menu that you don't know, try.She was just curious about food.She gave me the gift of being interested in food and how it gets onto our plate, where it comes from.
And that's, you know, it is fascinating.It is also such an integral part of where we are today as a human race.I mean, all our cultures are based around providing food for us to live on.
And that's, you know, it is, and even in our high technology world that we live in now, still, still, ultimately, that's the one really critical thing is getting food to put on our plates.
And we may not see as much of that production, but she was always interested in where food came from, why food came from a particular place, why people did things the way they did.And it just makes life much more interesting.
No, absolutely it does, absolutely it does.And I love the sort of smattering as well of recipes that come from her childhood.Like the one I always think of is the Singing Hinnies.
I knew you were going to say that.And it's a lovely, I think it is in English really, it's a really nice piece about Singing Hinnies and the poor kids not having as much fun singing it and not singing as much.
In fact, you know what, the whole section on pancakes and riddle cakes really opened my eyes because most people, think of a crepe when they think of a British pancake.And there was such an amazing variety.
And for England, anyway, we've seen a lot in Wales and Scotland and Ireland, there are happily dozens of different kinds.We just have like a little, I mean, there's nothing wrong with a crepe, of course, but you know.
And isn't it extraordinary what you can do with flour, sometimes eggs, a bit of water, a bit of liquid and a bit of fat.I mean,
It is amazing, the huge variety.
It was just extraordinary.Not just pancakes, obviously then you go beyond pancakes, you get to do lots of other things, but no, amazing.She's very good at persuading you that you want to make this particular one right now. I just opened up a copy.
I'm very sorry, I should probably have not opened the book, because now I know, oh, brown bread ice cream.
So delicious.It is one of those, oh, and I'll tell you what, there's a Sussex Pond pudding.
It's basically impossible to beat in the world of puddings.
It is one of the all-time great puddings, isn't it?
When I was, I don't know how old I would have been, probably nine, maybe I'll say I was ten.My birthday is in June and she asked me, do you like for your birthday?
And now looking back it's a slight embarrassment, only the daughter of a food writer would have said this.And I asked for Peking duck followed by Sussex Pond Pudding.
And my mother was such a wonderful woman, that's exactly what she did on a flaming June day.We used to have flaming June days.And she was steaming a wretched Sussex Pond Pudding.
It takes like five hours to do one of those or something stupid, doesn't it?
yeah it's boiling away and then also with a peaking duck she used to have this she used to rig up to make them she's making peaking duck she would have two chairs back to back with a broom handle across them and the duck would be strung between off the broom handle and then she'd have a fan an electric fan blasting at it to recreate the winds of peaking
And she did that for my birthday.Isn't that amazing?
That is amazing.Of course, the third edition, so there was a first edition where it seems that she was very enthused, going, I've done all this research.I've got all these recipes.We've lost touch.We can get it back.Real enthusiasm.
Then there's a second edition, and she seems to be going, oh, God, that was so naive. I didn't realize how bad the food system was.What are we going to do?It was basically second edition.
Sliding downhill.I actually really felt that it was sliding downhill.
Yeah.You can definitely see it just in her writing.It's like she's a bit depressed here.The second edition is a bit bigger and then you get this humongous magnum opus in the third edition.
Well, of course, you worked with her quite closely because she was, towards the end of writing or updating the third edition, she was obviously very poorly.But was it a therapeutic thing?
I mean, she obviously, judging by how big the book went, it was something to throw herself into. It's so great when you get into research and writing, it's such a good way to get rid of other worries.
If you can get down there, if you can get in there, sometimes it stops, doesn't it, because it's too sad or depressing.But if you can, it's amazing therapy, just to be involved in something.
But for her, it definitely was.And when my father died, my father died five years before she did, and she was devastated by his death, really devastated.He was a lot older than her.And I think that was the thing that kept her going.
Her only way... It was something she talked about as well.Her way through grief, through difficulties, was to throw herself into work.
and that was her way of getting through, first of all, my father's death and then discovering she had cancer and trying to find a way forward.And I suspect, I never talked about this, but I suspect that revising English food was
She didn't want to take on another big project because she didn't know whether she'd see it out.Maybe she didn't have, maybe she couldn't actually get into a new big project, rather like you were saying, you have to get into it.
Whereas English food was something that had fascinated her.And that she'd been visited with the Observer British Cookery as well.So it had always been there throughout her work.And so I think going back to the book,
and revising it, rewriting some of it, was again about doing what she could to complete this central pillar of food writing all the way through her career.So go back to that and really I mean, she didn't get all the way through.
She had a couple of notes and she, I think it was the last, was it Sources and Stuffings?Yes, that's right.Yeah.
She didn't manage it, but there were a few notes which I took on and added, but I mean, to be honest, I just left it much as it was with a few things that I knew she'd been thinking about.
No, it was a really important project for her just so she could keep going forward.
I guess it must have helped you too.I mean, I'm just projecting really and expecting what I would be doing in this situation.You know, I'm a doer, so I like to be doing things in times of crisis or, you know, sadness.
So getting my teeth into that third edition, I can imagine would be really good for you too at that time.
It was, it was.I mean, there wasn't that much to do.So much of it had already been done.I worked with the publishers on it.But just having
and look through all her notes and see that, you know, that very personal, you know, her little jottings on her copies of the old books and trying to be some... It was a way of connecting, I guess.
I'm very, very lucky to have parents who are writers because I have a lot of them still.It's like a legacy, but often in her books, there's things that to me are just so familiar. and it's like the message is left by them.
I still feel she's speaking to me.And in my dad's work as well, there's, and it's not always, but some, you know, here and there you find that little thing, which you just hear them saying that.So that's, was really, was really supportive.
And I can't think of the right word.Yeah, it was comforting.
And the great thing is, I think, is just how influential, well, all of her work is really.Even though she might, people might not know her name so much as 30 years ago, for example, or 40 years ago.There's so many people out there.
Nigel Slater, Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein, all these people who just absolutely loved her.So even though people might not be buying her cookery books, they're seeing the fruits of her labor in other people's inspiration.
So whether people know it or not, they're being inspired by Jane still, I would say.
You know, she was so ahead of her times.
She was saying, you know, commercial appropriation of British cooking is terrible, but actually we do cook really well and, you know, and that we should be, you know, she was fighting against
you know, that bastardization of British traditions by big business that took away all the, all the flavors, the honesty, the exuberance of British food and she, you know, and she rallied against
yeah, mass-produced cheese, as opposed to cheddar, real cheddar, or, I mean, all kinds of things.So things now, which I think a lot of, I was going to say which a lot of people really take for granted, but that's not true.
In some ways, we're more divided now.
I was just about to say, what would you think of food today?I think it's split even.We've got the best stuff ever, but we've also got the worst.We're really diverging, aren't we?
So there is a section of society
which is inherited and take it on that kind of work of fighting for better food and a lot of small producers, organic producers, not necessarily organic, but small scale producers who really care about what they're producing.
But you're absolutely right.There is this real sheer divide with the UPF end of the food.
Which I think she would find very dispiriting.
Yeah.I'm leaving this on a bit of a depressing note, Sophie.
Let's do one of my favorite recipes.I mean, it's very hard to pick just one.
Which is the Pauls and Devils chicken or turkey.
And that for me, that's something I still, we become, it's still a family tradition.We have it Boxing Day or just after Christmas every year. all the Japanese, and I love, and I saw it, I wish I could remember where, on a menu somewhere recently.
Yes.And it wasn't quite, it was, you know, chicken, I can't remember if it was chicken or turkey or partridge, one of them, in, you know, cream and a Japanese sauce, and I thought, I know that recipe.
And I love that recipe.It's that beautiful combination of the whole threads of cooked chicken the cream sauce, a little bit of herb, very very rich and then the spiciness of the devil sauce on the rest of the meat.
No it's really very good, it really is.We were talking about her legacy I suppose and extremely important, we can't leave without mentioning this at least, the Jane Grigson Trust.
which is going very strong.It's still going very strong.I'm not involved with it anymore.It's over here.It's a bit too fast to get to meetings.And yes, the Trust was started not that long after she died.
The wonderful Geraldine Holt was also a very good food writer, very good about baking and quite traditional. She suggested the library because I had inherited a lot of my mum's books and at the time I didn't have space for them all.
And she suggested setting up the Jane Briggs Library, which then morphed into the Jane Briggs & Trust. It is a resource that is available to anybody, so it's based in Oxford Brookes University, and it has grown hugely.
They also have very good cookery and drinks collections as well.But it's a terrific thing.And now, of course, they sponsor new writers as well. It's a wonderful and very fitting legacy.
My mum was incredibly supportive to new writers and to young writers, and she wasn't one of those people who sort of pumped it to her jealously and didn't want other people interfering.
She really welcomed people who loved food and wanted to write about them.
Yeah, she's definitely not sat in some ivory tower somewhere.Like the kind of idea that we have about some writers, especially people who write critically about food, sometimes you think, hmm.But Jane's all right, I reckon.
Yeah.No, she was.She's okay, my mum.She was okay.She was a good woman and she was funny and she was very warm and hugely encouraging.
She doesn't talk too much about her private life, personal life too much, little bits here and there, but her personality comes across so strongly in her writing that I do feel like I've got to know her.
Yeah, and she was like that.I mean, she wasn't always telling you about the history of a Stormbreed, but...
that would be a bit, but she was she was warm and she was funny and yeah people people adored her and she was very she was generous she was a generous writer she was a generous food writer and she I think she was just so fascinated by
by food and the history of food and the culture of food.And she wanted to share that.
And a lot of her writing is like sitting down with her at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee or tea and just chatting and telling you interesting things about what's on the table in front of you.
Well, it's time for us to wrap up really, isn't it?But thank you so much for spending the time.It's just wonderful to meet you.
It's been a pleasure to meet you and I'm so glad to meet you properly and to be able to chat to you as well.
And we'll hopefully speak to you again in the future pretty soon.It's been lovely talking.
It's been really nice talking to you, I've really enjoyed it.
Thank you very much Sophie.Now I've added some links to Sophie's website and her social media if you want to know more about the great work that she does.
There's also a link to her Waterstones page so you can check out the titles of her wonderful books. Well, what a great conversation that was.I do hope you agree.If you've got anything to add, do let me know.Comments and queries are always welcome.
And there'll be the usual postbag edition at the end of the season.So please contact me via email.Neil at BritishFoodHistory.com or find me on social media.
I'm on Twitter and BlueSky at Neil Butchery or Instagram and threads as Dr. That's D R underscore Neil underscore Butchery.
or you can go to the British Food History Facebook discussion page which is at facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash British Food History OK, now next week, it's the third and final part of my Jane Grigson extravaganza.
And I'll be speaking to some of my friends, well, who not only came to some of those early Jane Grigson dinner parties mentioned in my chat with Sophie, but also really supported me when my food businesses got going.
There are highs and there are lows, let me tell you. I'll also be listing my favourite recipes from English food, because there's a lot in there and it's a bit daunting.
And I'll also mention maybe the handful, and it is just a handful, of the ones you should possibly avoid.OK, Easter eggs.There are two this week. One is our chat from really before the interview properly started.We just started talking, basically.
And I almost forgot to press the record button.I do have a fear of doing that.But in our little, well, preamble, I suppose you could say, we talk about the recipes I have yet to cook from the book and how Sophie
found out about Little Old Me and my Jane Crickson blog.We also talk about some of the dishes in there which really inspired me for the very first time and showed me how good traditional English food could be.
There's a second shorter easter egg about how useful or not photographs are in cookery books. Remember my Easter Eggs are for monthly £3 subscribers.
If you would like to become a subscriber and support the blog and podcast and to access those Easter Eggs plus extra blog posts and to receive a monthly newsletter please visit the website www.britishfoodhistory.com and go to the support the blog and podcast tab.
You can also gift me with a one-off virtual coffee or pint if you fancy. Everything I receive goes into making more content.Remember one lucky subscriber or donator will win a copy of both of my new books.
Those books are called Need to Know a History of Baking out now published by Icon Books and there will be on the 24th of October The Philosophy of Puddings published by the British Library. All right, yes, so some news.
Okay, Halloween, 7 p.m., that's Greenwich Mean Time.Myself and Alessandra Pino will be in conversation together.The title of the event, Monsters and Their Meals, From Devils in Disguise to Gruesome Pies.
That wasn't my title, that was Ali's, she's very good at titles.Well, we're gonna be exploring food and drink in Gothic literature. And we're also going to be looking at some food from history that you could say is stranger than fiction.
There's been some bizarre stuff in the past. It should be a really fun evening.We're going to be looking at some of Gothic literature's most iconic characters and the food they ate, as well as some things that go bump in the oven.
It's a pay-as-you-feel event.We want everyone to be able to come, but if you can chuck us a few pounds, that would be simply marvelous.
Also, there are these pudding workshops, specifically plum pudding workshops, happening at the Museum of Royal Worcester, if you are interested.I've been developing this workshop at the museum, and there's gonna be a few of them.
I won't be doing them all, but anyway, if you're in the Worcester area and fancy it, book yourself a place.There's gonna be family-friendly events on the 29th and 30th of October.
As well as an adult one on the 23rd of November where there'll be a certain amount of mulled cider to go with the nice plum puddings.And I'm going to be doing specifically the ones on the 29th of October and 23rd of November.
I've left links in the show notes.There's an events page on the website now, so go there to see a full list of events.Events are being added, well, every week at the moment actually.
In those show notes, you will find links to all of the things that have been discussed in today's episode.But anyway, thank you very much for your continued support.I shall see you next time.Cheerio.
