Len Deighton was born in 1929 in London. He did his national service in the RAF, went to the Royal College of Art and designed many book jackets, including the original UK edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The enormous success of his first spy novel, The IPCRESS File (1962), was repeated in a remarkable sequence of books over the following decades. These varied from historical fiction (Bomber, perhaps his greatest novel) to dystopian alternative fiction (SS-GB) and a number of brilliant non-fiction books on the Second World War (Fighter, Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly). 
 
His spy novels chart the twists and turns of Britain and the Cold War in ways which now give them a unique flavour. They preserve a world in which Europe contains many dictatorships, in which the personal can be ruined by the ideological and where the horrors of the Second World War are buried under only a very thin layer of soil. Deighton's fascination with technology, his sense of humour and his brilliant evocation of time and place make him one of the key British espionage writers, alongside John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré.

Len Deighton

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Simon Wroe

Two months behind on his rent, young graduate Monocle swallows his dreams and takes the only job he can find: the lowest-rung chef in a gastropub in Camden. Here he finds himself surrounded by a group of deranged, criminal hoodlums (his co-workers) and at the mercy of an ingenious sadist (the head chef, Bob). What follows is a furiously-paced, ribald, raucous and deeply touching tale of loyalty and revenge, dark appetites and fading dreams, and a young man finding his way in the world as he is plunged into the fat and the frying pan and everything else besides.

Chop Chop

C Pam Zhang

A rapturous novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world 
 
'A startling prose hymn to food and sex, love and violence' GUARDIAN 
'Unique, ambitious, haunting' GABRIELLE ZEVIN 
'Truly exceptional' ROXANE GAY 
'Superb' DOUGLAS STUART 
 
A smog has spread, food is disappearing, and a chef escapes her career in London to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony: an experiment in a new way of living and eating. There, her mysterious employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste and touch. Before long, she is pushed to discover the real nature of the project: a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the place. 
 
Land of Milk and Honey is a striking novel about food, sex and the intricacies of desire. 
 
'It&rsquo;s hard not be mesmerised by prose that is as rich and as startling as the food her protagonist prepares' OBSERVER 
'An astounding book' CALEB AZUMAH NELSON 
'The most sensual novel about food I have ever read' EMMA DONOGHUE

Land of Milk and Honey

Jamie Oliver

Jamie revolutionises delicious healthy family meals by going back to basics in the kitchen. In this beautiful reissue here, you'll find everything you need to make cooking inspiring and accessible to everyone. 
 
In 'Family Tree' he takes recipes several different ways, giving you confidence whilst at the same time hoping to get you hooked on learning more. He also reveals the world's most-loved food from a global website survey he conducted: the Top Ten dishes that families love to eat together. 
 
From exciting dishes inspired by Jamie's travels including Southern Indian Rice and Seafood Soup to family favourites like flaky Chicken and sweet Leek Pie and Banana and Blueberry French Toast, there's something in Jamie's Dinners for everyone (even the most fussy eaters)! 
 
'Superb, fabulous, brilliant' Daily Mail 
 
'Whether you're a seasoned pro or a complete novice, this book should be a vital ingredient on your kitchen shelves' Company 
 
'The Jamie Effect is being felt not just in schools but in households all over Britain. We must rejoice in the national treasure he is' Vanessa Feltz, Daily Express

Jamie's Dinners

Olivia Potts

Olivia Potts' mother died when she just twenty-five. Stricken with grief, she did something life changing and rather ridiculous: she gave up a high-flying legal career to study at the notoriously difficult Le Cordon Bleu, despite not being able to cook. No one ever told Olivia you couldn't bake your way to happiness - but could you?

A Half Baked Idea

Winner of the Fortnum & Mason’s Debut Food Book Award

Claudia Roden

Originally published in 1968, Claudia Roden's bestselling classic Book of Middle Eastern Food introduced British readers to the food of the region for the very first time. Containing over 500 recipes, brought to life with enchanting stories, memories and culinary wisdom, this book takes readers on a cook's tour of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. 
 
Now in a beautiful new edition, this timeless work from one of the most respected prize-winning food writers will continue to inform and inspire as the next generation of cooks discovers its riches. 
 
 
PRAISE FOR CLAUDIA RODEN: 
 
'Claudia Roden is no more a simple cookbook writer than Marcel Proust was a biscuit baker. She is, rather, memorialist, historian, ethnographer, anthropologist, essayist, poet ...' Simon Schama 
 
'Roden's great gift is to conjure up not just a cuisine but the culture from which it springs.' Nigella Lawson 
 
'Beyond the evocative stories and buoyant style ... there is always information ... meticulously collected, compellingly assembled, lovingly told ... informative, delectable and incredibly useful.' Yotam Ottolenghi

A New Book of Middle Eastern Food

The Essential Guide to Middle Eastern Cooking. As Heard on BBC Radio 4

Dave Eggers

Mokhtar grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings in a tiny apartment, raised by Yemeni immigrant parents. As a young man he learned of the true origins of coffee making - an ancient art born in Yemen, the secret stolen by European colonisers - and became determined to resurrect the ancient art of Yemeni coffee. 
 
Mokhtar dedicated himself to coffee, quickly becoming one of the world's leading experts, the first Arab in the world to qualify as a 'Q Grader'. But while visiting Yemen on a research trip, he was caught in the maelstrom of sudden civil war. The US Embassy closed its doors, and so Mokhtar embarked on a nail-biting adventure - to escape the country with his precious coffee samples intact. 
 
The Monk of Mokha is heart-pounding adventure story, a tale of underdog entrepreneurship and true passion, and a fascinating modern take on the great American dream.

The Monk of Mokha

Robert Penn

'Charming, important . . . a journey of discovery' Telegraph 
 
Over the course of a year, Robert Penn learns how to plant, harvest, thresh and mill his own wheat, in order to bake bread for his family. In returning to this pre-industrial practice, he tells the fascinating story of our relationship with bread: from the domestication of wheat in the Fertile Crescent at the dawn of civilization, to the rise of mass-produced loaves and the resurgence in homebaking today. 
 
Gathering knowledge and wisdom from experts around the world - farmers on the banks of the Nile, harvesters in the American Midwest and Parisian boulangers - Penn reconnects the joy of making and eating bread with a deep appreciation for the skill and patience required to cultivate its key ingredient. This book is a celebration of the millennia-old craft of breadmaking, and how it is woven into the story of humanity. 
 
'Compelling, vivid . . . Slow Rise will be welcomed by the new bread geeks' Spectator

Slow Rise

A Bread-Making Adventure

Augustine Sedgewick

Coffee is one of the most valuable commodities in the history of the global economy and the world's most popular drug. The very word 'coffee' is one of the most widespread on the planet. Augustine Sedgewick's brilliant new history tells the hidden and surprising story of how this came to be, tracing coffee's 400-year transformation into an everyday necessity. 
 
The story is one that few coffee drinkers know. It centres on the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill, born in the slums of nineteenth-century Manchester, founded one of the world's great coffee dynasties. In the process, Hill helped to turn El Salvador into perhaps the most intensive monoculture in modern history, a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality and violence. 
 
The book follows coffee from the Hill family plantations into the supermarkets, kitchens and work places of the United States, and finally into today's omnipresent cafés. Sedgewick reveals the unexpected consequences of the rise of coffee, which reshaped large areas of the tropics, transformed understandings of energy, and ultimately made us dependent on a drug served in a cup.

Coffeeland

A History

Elizabeth David

'She has the intelligence, subtlety, sensuality, courage and creative force of the true artist' - Wine and Food 
 
A classic in its genre, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine compiles Elizabeth David's short pieces on food and wine. 
 
A bestseller when it was first published in 1984, much of David's finest writing featured in magazines and newspapers such as the Spectator, the Sunday Times and Harper's, and these pieces contain tantalizing glimpses of her very private life. 
 
An Omelette and a Glass of Wine is an exquisite collection that demonstrates the talent that made Elizabeth David the most celebrated food writer of her time.

An Omelette And a Glass of Wine

Peter J. D'Adamo

The individualized prescription for maximising health, metabolism and vitality in every stage of your life. Your blood type is the key to living a healthy and vibrant life. Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo's groundbreaking work on blood types and their connection to diet and lifestyle has attracted huge attention and support. Thousands of testimonials and new genetic research all confirm that blood type affects your mental health, the way you digest your food and the efficiency of your metabolic and immune systems. His first book on the subject of blood types, Eat Right 4 (for) Your Type, has consistently been on the bestseller lists.

Live Right for Your Type

Ever since working at the River Cafe for Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray, Jamie Oliver has had a serious passion for Italian food. Now, ten years later, Italy and its wonderful flavours continue to have a major influence on his food and cooking. In Jamie's Italy, Jamie travels this famously gastronomic country paying homage to the classic dishes of each region and searching for new ideas to bring home. The result is a sensational collection of Italian recipes, old and new, that will ensure Italy's influence reaches us all. Jamie's book will transport you to Italy or at least bring Italy home to you.

Jamie's Italy

Julie Powell

Trapped in a boring job and living in a tiny apartment in New York, Julie Powell regularly finds herself weeping on the way home from work. Then one night, through her mascara-smudged eyes, Julie notices that the few items she's grabbed from the Korean grocery store are the very ingredients for Potage Parmentier, as described in Julia Childs' legendary cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And The Project is born. 
 
Julie begins to cook - every one of the 524 recipes in the book, in the space of just one year. This is Julie's story, as gradually, from oeufs en cocotte to bifstek sauté au beurre, from "Bitch Rice" to preparing live lobsters, she realises that this deranged Project is changing her life. The richness of the thousands of sauces she slaves over is beginning to spread into her life, and she begins to find the joie de vivre that has been missing for too many years.

Julie & Julia

My Year of Cooking Dangerously

Bee Wilson

Bee Wilson is the food writer and historian who writes as the 'Kitchen Thinker' in the Sunday Telegraph, and is the author of Swindled!. Her charming and original new book, Consider the Fork, explores how the implements we use in the kitchen have shaped the way we cook and live. 
 
This is the story of how we have tamed fire and ice, wielded whisks, spoons, graters, mashers, pestles and mortars, all in the name of feeding ourselves. Bee Wilson takes us on an enchanting culinary journey through the incredible creations, inventions and obsessions that have shaped how and what we cook. From huge Tudor open fires to sous-vide machines, the birth of the fork to Roman gadgets, Consider the Fork is the previously unsung history of our kitchens. 
 
Bee Wilson writes a weekly food column, 'The Kitchen Thinker' in The Sunday Telegraph, for which she has three times been named the Guild of Food Writers Food Journalist of the Year. Her previous books include The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us and Swindled!. Before she became a food writer, she was a Research Fellow in History at St John's College, Cambridge. She has also been a semi-finalist on Masterchef. Her favourite kitchen implement is currently the potato ricer. 
 
'A cracking good read, as enjoyable as it is enlightening' Raymond Blanc, Chef-Patron 'Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons' 
 
'Wonderful ... Witty, scholarly, utterly absorbing and fired by infectious curiosity' Lucy Lethbridge, Observer 
 
'[A] delightfully informative history of cooking and eating from the prehistoric discovery of fire to twenty-first-century high-tech, low-temp soud-vide-style cookery' ELLE magazine 
 
'A graceful study' Steven Poole, Guardian

Consider the Fork

A History of How We Cook and Eat

A result of 16 years of research, The Book of Jewish Food was originally published in 1997 when Jewish cuisine was overlooked by the food industry and enjoyed instead behind closed doors around the world. In this revolutionary book, Roden shone a light on the diverse flavours and cultural origins of those dishes, revealing the beauty and simplicity of traditional Ashkenazi and Sephardi food on the page for the first time. In doing so, she put Jewish food on the map and changed the modern culinary landscape for good. 
 
This beautiful 25th anniversary edition with new content and recipes is a celebration of the food that has transformed our world, and will make the perfect gift for any home cook.

The Book of Jewish Food

An Odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the Present Day - 25th Anniversary Edition

An Odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the Present Day

Lindsey Bareham

Simon Hopkinson

While Lindsey Bareham was helping Simon Hopkinson put together his best-selling book, Roast Chicken and Other Stories, the two of them began to reminisce about hotel and restaurant dishes they had grown up with and always loved; those Cinderellas of the kitchen that we abandoned in our quest for the wilder shores of gastronomy. Classics such as Duck a l'Orange, Weiner Schnitzel, Moussaka, Garlic Mushrooms and, of course, Prawn Cocktail, have all been slung out like old lovers but when made with fine, fresh ingredients and prepared with care and a genuine love of good eating, these former favourites should grace the most discerning of tables. 
 
The Prawn Cocktail Years sets out to rehabilitate the food we once loved and found exciting. In so doing, the authors take us on a cook's tour of the legendary post-war hotels and gentlemen's clubs with their Mulligatawny and Shepherd's Pie, to the bistros of Swinging London where Paté Maison and sizzling Escargots excited the braver palate. Then there were the first Italian trattorias where Saltimbocca and Oranges in Caramel were the order of the day and the 'Continental' restaurants with their exotic offerings of Beef Stroganoff, Chicken Kiev and Rhum Baba. Recipes for all these old favourites have been brought back to life as well as those classics that were once described as the Great British Meal - Prawn Cocktail, Steak Garni with Chips and Black Forest Gateau. Cooked as they should be, this much derided and often ridiculed dinner is still something very special indeed. The prawn cocktail years are staging a comeback . . .

The Prawn Cocktail Years

Beautiful food &amp; classic techniques 
 
For Jamie, this book was like a new beginning. Setting up his restaurant Fifteen, which focused on training young adults from some challenging backgrounds, inspired Jamie to use this book to show that anyone can learn to cook amazing food, based on simple principles and passion.

Jamie's Kitchen

Mary Berry

Mary Berry is our very favourite cookery writer and presenter. She has shared her skills, experience and tips through a varied and fascinating career, covering almost every aspect of cookery, for over sixty years. Yet few people know the professional and personal story behind her success. 
 
 Now, in her charming, life-affirming memoir, Mary tells us about her life, a life in some ways reassuringly ordinary, yet at the same time completely extraordinary. 
 
 It is a life of juggling that working mums everywhere will recognize; the life of a giver, who has always tried to do the best and right thing; a life that inspires in its determination to achieve despite obstacles along the way; a life that proves that you really can be a style icon and at the pinnacle of your career in your 70s. 
 
 The life of a delightfully traditional, but thoroughly modern, British woman.

Recipe for Life

The Autobiography

Kerryann Dunlop

Jamie has chosen his favourite subjects for this Food Tube series; Kerryann's Family Cookbook recipes fulfil Jamie's high food standards of quality, flavour and fun. 
Kerryann takes you from snacks to evening meals with advice for getting kids more involved in cooking and eating different foods. 
With plenty of tips to get the most out of fresh, simple ingredients, Kerryann's recipes show that it's more than possible to eat delicious food on a budget. 
Simple twists on meat, fish and veg classics include: Homemade fish fingers and minty smashed peas; Potato, chickpea and cauliflower curry and Majestical mac 'n' cheese.

Jamie's Food Tube: The Family Cookbook

Stanley Tucci

‘Sharing food is one of the purest human acts' 
 
Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime. 
In What I Ate in One Year Tucci records twelve months of eating, in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself. 
Ranging from the mouth-wateringly memorable, to the comfortingly domestic, to the infuriatingly inedible, the meals memorialized in this diary are a prism through which he reflects on the ways his life, and his family, are constantly evolving. Through food he marks – and mourns – the passing of time, the loss of loved ones, and prepares himself for what is to come.

What I Ate in One Year

(and related thoughts)

Paul Hollywood

'I have wanted to write this book for a long time. It sees me discovering baking cultures of the world in ten of its most amazing cities [...] the experience will stay with me for ever.' 
 
Containing both sweet and savoury recipes inspired by cities from around the world including Paris, Copenhagen, Miami, New York, London and Naples, Paul takes classic bakes and gives them his own twist. 
 
From Madeleines to Kale, cherry and cheese scones, Caprese cake to Chelsea buns and Polish cheesecake to Marble bundt cake, take some weekend time out in the kitchen to discover some new favourite bakes. As Paul found on his travels, baking is very much a family activity and so many of the world's recipes have been passed down from generation to generation. Now he wants to pass them on to you and your families.

The Weekend Baker

Discover over 80 delicious recipes from around the world with one of the nation’s favourite bakers

Alice B. Toklas

In this memoir-turned-cookbook, Alice B. Toklas describes her life with partner Gertrude Stein and their famed Paris salon, which entertained the great avant-garde and literary figures of their day. 
 
With dry wit and characteristic understatement Toklas ponders the ethics of killing a carp in her kitchen before stuffing it with chestnuts; decorating a fish to amuse Picasso at lunch; and travelling across France during the First World War in an old delivery truck, gathering local recipes along the way. She includes a friend's playful recipe for 'Haschiche Fudge', which promises 'brilliant storms of laughter and ecstatic reveries', much like her book.

Murder in the Kitchen

A. W. Chase

Travelling physician, salesman, author and self-made man, Dr Chase dispensed remedies all over America during the late nineteenth century, collecting recipes and domestic tips from the people he met along the way. His self-published books became celebrated US bestsellers and were the household Bibles of their day. 
 
Containing recipes for American-style treats, such as Boston cream cakes, Kentucky Corn Dodgers and pumpkin pie, as well as genial advice on baking bread and testing whether a cake is cooked, this is a treasure trove of culinary wisdom from the homesteads of a still rural, pioneering United States.

Buffalo Cake and Indian Pudding

Alexandre Dumas

As well as being the author of The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas was also an enthusiastic gourmand and expert cook. His Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, published in 1873, is an encyclopaedic collection of ingredients, recipes and anecdotes, from Absinthe to Zest via cake, frogs' legs, oysters, Roquefort and vanilla. Included here are recipes for bamboo pickle and strawberry omelette, advice on cooking all manner of beast from bear to kangaroo brought together in a witty and gloriously eccentric culinary compendium.

From Absinthe to Zest: An Alphabet for Food Lovers

Wyvern

Colonel Wyvern, stationed with the army in Madras during the height of British imperial rule, opened a cookery school upon his return to England and was a passionate enthusiast for both European and Indian cuisine. In these vivid, common-sense and entertaining writings, he gives advice on re-creating French classics in the steaming heat; describes tiffin parties and cooking while at camp; and laments the declining popularity of curry in the Raj, providing foolproof recipes for curry powder, tamarind chutney, korma and 'mulligatunny' soup. With devotees including Elizabeth David, Wyvern's unique brand of anglo-Indian cookery is still reflected in the way we eat today.

Notes from Madras

The Sorted Crew

Ben Ebbrell

The next time your friends show up on your doorstep without warning, don't simply reach for the takeaway menu because we've got a whole host of ideas to fill you up. From dishes that beat the takeaway to some good old cinema snacks, this chapter has it all. Recipes include: Stuffed Tacos, Popcorn Chicken, Hoisin Ribs and Salt 'n' Pepper Wings. 
 
Food with Friends is the second cookbook from The Sorted Crew, with recipes by Ben Ebbrell. It's the ultimate guide for entertaining friends in a fun and fuss-free way, from romantic suppers and family barbecues to curry nights for hungry hordes. Whether you're cooking for two or twenty, Food with Friends by The Sorted Crew is THE book for easy entertaining.

Fast Food Snacks

Pete Brown

In Britain, we have always had an awkward relationship with food.  We've been told for so long that we are terrible cooks and yet according to a recent YouGov survey, our traditional food and drink are more important than the monarchy and at least as significant as our landscape and national monuments in defining a collective notion of who we are. Taking nine archetypically British dishes - Pie and Peas, A Cheese Sandwich, Fish and Chips, Spag Bol, Devonshire Cream Tea, Curry, The Full English, The Sunday Roast and a Crumble with Custard - and examining them in their perfect context, Pete Brown reveals just how fundamental food is to our sense of identity, perhaps even our sense of pride, and the ways in which we understand our place in the world.

Pie Fidelity

In Defence of British Food

Michael Pollan

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE NEW NETFLIX SERIES 
 
'It's not often that a life-changing book falls into one's lap ... Yet Michael Pollan's Cooked is one of them.' SundayTelegraph 
 
'This is a love song to old, slow kitchen skills at their delicious best' Kathryn Huges, GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 
 
The New York Times Top Five Bestseller - Michael Pollan's uniquely enjoyable quest to understand the transformative magic of cooking 
 
Michael Pollan's Cooked takes us back to basics and first principles: cooking with fire, with water, with air and with earth. 
 
Meeting cooks from all over the world, who share their wisdom and stories, Pollan shows how cooking is at the heart of our culture and that when it gets down to it, it also fundamentally shapes our lives. 
 
Filled with fascinating facts and curious, mouthwatering tales from cast of eccentrics, Cooked explores the deepest mysteries of how and why we cook.

Cooked

A Natural History of Transformation

Alex Kapranos

In September 2005, Alex Kapranos began writing about what he ate while touring the world with the rock band Franz Ferdinand. The writing is as much about where he eats and the people he eats with as the unusual flavours he tastes on the road. 
 
Whether it&rsquo;s munching donuts with cops in Brooklyn, swallowing bull&rsquo;s balls with the band in Buenos Aires or queuing for a saveloy in South Shields, these are surprising and vivid snapshots of life on the road. 
 
Funny, poignant, sickening or sexual depending on the situation, the material, both new and previously published in the Guardian, is fascinating and entertaining.

Sound Bites

Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand

Samuel Pepys

As well as being the most celebrated diarist of all time, Samuel Pepys was also a hearty drinker, eater and connoisseur of epicurean delights, who indulged in every pleasure seventeenth-century London had to offer. 
 
Whether he is feasting on barrels of oysters, braces of carps, larks' tongues and copious amounts of wine, merrymaking in taverns until the early hours, attending formal dinners with lords and ladies or entertaining guests at home with his young wife, these irresistible selections from Pepys's diaries provide a frank, high-spirited and vivid picture of the joys of over-indulgence - and the side-effects afterwards.

The Joys of Excess

Jamie's first book - the one that started it all. 
 
The Naked Chef was born out of the idea to strip down restaurant techniques to their bare essentials and create cool dishes for everyone to cook at home, and get boys back in the kitchen! It's all about having a laugh with fun, delicious food from a young person's perspective.

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