Paul Levy

Writer and former chair of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery

https://www.paullevy.com

Biography

Born in Lexington, KY in 1941, over-educated at the University of Chicago, University College London, Harvard (PhD) and Oxford, Paul Levy has lived in Oxfordshire for more than 50 years. Among his nine books are the biography of the philosopher, G.E. Moore and the letters of Lytton Strachey; he is an authority on the Cambridge Apostles and the Bloomsbury Group. As a food writer he was one of those who coined the word “foodie”; was Food & Wine Editor of The Observer (the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper) in its glory days; wrote “the London Letter" for Gourmet; and was restaurant critic for Travel + Leisure. He wrote and presented the Channel 4 networked 5-part series “The Feast of Christmas”, shown in the UK, Australia and Canada, before reverting to type and writing on European culture for the Wall Street Journal for the next 24 years. The younger of his two daughters does catering and recipe development at thekitchencooperative.com. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Cooking à la Ritz

Louis Diat

The book from which I learned to cook, by a disciple of those old crooks and embezzlers, Ritz and Escoffier.

A New Book of Middle Eastern Food

Claudia Roden

Enlarged version of the pioneering book that introduced the West to what is now one of our favourite cuisines.

Roasting: A Simple Art

Barbara Kafka

Crank up the oven, disable the smoke alarm, and open the kitchen window for the best-ever roast chicken recipe in this beautifully written and scientifically literate book.