Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the English at Table

I am not the sort of person who watches celebrity Chefs on television or buys the latest cookery book. But oddly enough there is a book about food that I really want to read, I first heard about it before Christmas, my ears pricked up on Sunday morning when the Food Programme on Radio 4 was reviewing books for Christmas. I love books of all kinds, but I am not particularly interested in food writing so I was really listening to find gift suggestions for other people. They read an extract from Nigel Slater's new book Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the English at Table. The extract was about the pink wafer biscuit and it posed the question who could possibly choose of that as their favourite. It described the pink wafer as the Tim Henman of the biscuit world. I love Nigel Slater's style of writing and it sounds like the sort of book that my husband Robbie would enjoy, but I he is incredibly easy to buy for and I had already bought a present for him. As for the pink wafer biscuit children love them because they are sweet with the added challenge of layers which they can ease apart with their teeth. I have spent almost all of my adult life working with homeless and disadvantaged adults and I have come across another group of people who enjoy pink wafer biscuits - people with no teeth! It brought to mind a cantankerous old chap who I worked with years ago, he lived almost exclusively on tuna, strong tea and pink wafer biscuits! I wouldn't recommend the diet, but I did develop a bit of a soft spot for the chap - he was impossible to work with, but he always made me smile. I dropped a few hints before Mother's Day but nobody took any notice, so I will just have to treat myself.