Patience Gray

This book is perhaps the jewel in Prospect Book's crown. Within a few months of its first appearance in 1986 it was hailed as a modern classic. Fiona MacCarthy wrote in The Times that, 'the book is a large and grandiose life history, a passionate narrative of extremes of experience.'; Jeremy Round called Patience Gray 'he high priestess of cooking';, whose book pushes the form of the cookery book as far as it can go. Angela Carter remarked that it was less a cookery book that a summing-up of the genre of the late-modern British cookery book. The work has attracted a cult following in the United States, where passages have been read out at great length on the radio; and it has been anthologized by Paul Levy in The Penguin Book of Food and Drink. It was given a special award by the Andre Simon Book Prize committee in 1987.

A gentle book of French cooking by a couple of English women who knew how to write. First issued in paperback, it became such an object of English affection that it was returned in this worthy hard-back binding.

Ring Doves and Snakes follows several characters living in a small coastal village in southern Italy during the 1950s. The story centers on Eleanor, an English woman who moves to the village to teach at a local school.The narrative explores the dynamics between the villagers and outsiders, as Eleanor navigates cultural differences and learns the local customs. Village life operates according to ancient traditions and superstitions, which stand in contrast to Eleanor's more modern sensibilities.The book depicts daily routines, food preparation, religious observances, and social interactions in post-war rural Italy. These scenes are interwoven with encounters between Eleanor and her various neighbors, including a mysterious snake charmer.Through its portrayal of cultural collision and adaptation, Ring Doves and Snakes examines themes of belonging, tradition versus modernity, and the complex relationship between newcomers and established communities.

In a few short chapters, Patience Gray lays out a whole repertoire, drawn mainly from the Mediterranean and France, that might be cooked on board ships. Her aim was to wean the cooks off frozen, dried and packeted food and to respond to both the seasons and the supplies available at ports of call. The style of cookery was much as in her earlier, and first, book Plats du Jour (1957): retro to us, bourgeois French in another form of shorthand. The style of writing is eloquent and prescriptive: the author keen to impart good habits as well as good cooking. Thus there are chapters about equipment and kitchen basics as well as mere recipes.