Corkscrewed by Robert V. Camuto

Adventures in the new French wine country

Julia Child: My Life in France

If, like me until recently, you had never knowingly heard of Julia Child, it will help to understand that she was, so to speak, America’s answer to Elizabeth David.  It was she who, after the second world war, introduced the dishes and techniques of French cooking to, principally, her countrywomen.  I had been aware of, but never read, her encyclopaedic work Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but could not have told you who had written it (or even that it was an American book).  In fact, Julia Child later parted company from Elizabeth David: while David went on to explore the cuisines of Italy and other Mediterranean countries, Child stuck to that of France but developed her teaching skills into pioneering television cookery programmes decades before they came to clog up our TV channels on a daily basis.

Sarah's Midnight Anthology

A year ago I introduced readers of this website to an old friend, Sarah Nock, who had written an insightful  –  and surprisingly funny  –  account of what it is like to suffer from Parkinson’s disease.  (My review of Ponderings on Parkinson’s is still on-site.)  Now she has published another book of a quite different kind: an anthology of verse, but one with a difference.