Tom Jaine is a former restaurateur, a food writer and until recently the proprietor of Prospect Books. He was educated at Kingswood School (1955–1959) and at Balliol College, Oxford where he studied Modern history (1961–1964). He worked as an archivist from 1964 to 1973 and a restaurateur from 1974 to 1984. From 1984 to 1988, he organised the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, and in 1993 he became the proprietor of Prospect Books: a prize-winning publishing company specialising in food and food history. From 1989 to 1994 he was also editor of the annual Good Food Guide. He is the author of four books and has written for The Times, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and many other newspapers and magazines. He has presented The Food Programme and appeared on it many times, has done interviews for the BBC, BBC TV, and ITV, and a series of programmes about food and cookery in the Balkans for BBC Radio 4. He was Glenfiddich Restaurant Writer of the year in 1994, Glenfiddich Food Broadcaster of the year in 2000, and that same year he was also the winner of the top award: Glenfiddich Trophy for the best Wine and Food Writer of the year. In 2014 he was given the Derek Cooper Lifetime Achievement Award and the BBC Food and Farming Awards.