On the centenary of her birth, we celebrate the blue-blooded rebel whose work, including Honey From a Weed, still influences the way we eat today
I had spent months thinking about her. Memoirs and diaries had been ransacked. Family and friends had been grilled. Secrets had been given up and, sometimes, withheld. Even so, I didn’t realise just how strongly I felt about the food writer Patience Gray– she had, without my even noticing it, become a kind of heroine to me – until long after the book in which I put her was published.
I was talking about this book, a collection of biographical essays, at a festival almost a year after it came out. The day was fine, and the audience large and attentive, but towards the back of the marquee, I sensed mutiny. Sure enough, no sooner had I finished speaking than a hand went up, sharp as an exclamation mark. The woman on the other end of it was tight-lipped. “My problem is that I don’t really like any of the women in your book,” she announced. “They all behave so badly.” With some deliberation, she began to read out a list: a charge card of my subjects’ crimes and misdemeanours. “Take Patience Gray,” she said. “She abandoned her children in Italy. They had to hitchhike home to London on their own.” An accusatory pause. “What kind of woman does that?” My smile was cool. “The kind of woman I rather admire,” I found myself saying.
No one knew what to make of a book that included, among other things, a recipe for fox
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