I blame the Rosetta Stone. Early for a meeting near the British Museum, I took a detour to revisit the ancient artefact. It’s inscribed with the same words three times over: first in hieroglyphs, then Demotic, and finally in Ancient Greek. It’s both beautiful as a carved object and revolutionary as a decoder of hieroglyphic […]
This is a story of triumph against the odds; an account of a modest recipe and a tale of towering talent. Both the recipe and the person made infinitely less fuss than most, and yet achieved so much more. The recipe is Pumpkin Spelt Risotto, the perfect food for Autumn days. The person is Sophie […]
There are many reasons to admire the writer Karen Blixen and Babette’s Feast is one of them. Her story of a french woman who creates a magnificent dinner on which she lavishes her entire fortune is one I’ve always loved. The two elderly sisters for whom Babette cooks are aghast to learn that she has […]
I have no talent for gardening, there’s no use pretending. But I’ve developed an obsession with my garden. That’s because my friends Non and Helen have actually planted something in it for me. Each morning I check on my white aliums to see how fluffy and camp they’ve become. Here they were yesterday, bursting to […]
