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Other lives
Nov. 23rd, 2007 10:18 amI'm not a great fan of autobiography, but this week I've enjoyed listening to Katharine Whitehorn reading excerpts from her autobiography, Selective Memory.
I've long been a fan of Katharine Whitehorn. Her journalism was always very readable and cutting. Better still were her broadcasts - with her husky voice and plummy Roedean accent that might at any moment turn the air blue, she's one of the models for my detective protagonist Verity Blanchard.
She also wrote the one cookery book that should be standard issue for everybody going off to make their own way in the world: Cooking in a Bedsitter, shamefully out of print. It does what no other cookery book ever has - show how to eat reasonably with the absolute bare minimum of space and resources, assuming only one pan and a hotplate. It's what life should be about, not chasing after strange bits of kit that you will use once and then allow to gather dust in the back of a cupboard.
It also contains one of my favourite quotes of hers (or anybody's) - one which sadly gets omitted from all the standard lists of pithy remarks of hers.
If your friends don't like garlic, get some new friends.
I've long been a fan of Katharine Whitehorn. Her journalism was always very readable and cutting. Better still were her broadcasts - with her husky voice and plummy Roedean accent that might at any moment turn the air blue, she's one of the models for my detective protagonist Verity Blanchard.
She also wrote the one cookery book that should be standard issue for everybody going off to make their own way in the world: Cooking in a Bedsitter, shamefully out of print. It does what no other cookery book ever has - show how to eat reasonably with the absolute bare minimum of space and resources, assuming only one pan and a hotplate. It's what life should be about, not chasing after strange bits of kit that you will use once and then allow to gather dust in the back of a cupboard.
It also contains one of my favourite quotes of hers (or anybody's) - one which sadly gets omitted from all the standard lists of pithy remarks of hers.
If your friends don't like garlic, get some new friends.
