The True History of English Food

Clarissa Dickson Wright has written a new book in time for the Christmas season and it is a stinker. A History of English Food is in reality nothing of the kind, but instead substitutes speculation and snobbish reminiscence for any modicum of research or analysis. Judged by her memoir, Spilling the Beans, Dickson Wright is a mean old bird intent on settling scores, dropping names, taking credit and boasting. Even worse, she would appear to be one of those reformed alcoholics who rattles on, and on, about AA and is insufferable on the subject of booze. She has had a difficult life and recounts the many dreadful things she has experienced, but both before and after drinking herself into homeless destitution following the death of a lover she had been quite the barrister, at least in her telling. It therefore is a bit of a surprise that the brief she has written extolling herself is so unconvincing. Dickson Wright did not much like the law, an understandable enough sentiment, but her re