Sir, – Jennifer O’Connell takes issue with Nigella Lawson swanning around her kitchen with a burger made of coffee ice-cream and finds all the pretension surrounding food “wearying” (Life, October 3rd). But obsession with food or “food madness” is hardly a bit of postmodern wheeze.
If O’Connell looks more closely at her maternal grandmother’s copy of Maura Laverty’s Full and Plenty, first published in 1960, she will find words and phrases that might easily come out of Nigella’s lovely mouth, such as “I love kitchens. The preparation of food has always been to me what literature or music or painting is to others” and “Peel a basket of apples and watch the soothed feeling that comes over you as the knife slides smoothly between skin and juicy flesh”.
So, hands off Nigella, I say. She didn’t just lick it off the floor you know. – Yours, etc,