MUSTREADS
Out now in paperback
IN THE RESTAURANT by Christoph Ribbat (Pushkin £9.99, 228 pp) POPPING out for pizza, ordering in Chinese or going for a celebratory blow-out: the concept of eating out as a treat, or simply because we can’t be bothered to cook, is so familiar that we rarely pause to think about how restaurants began.
Christoph Ribbat’s account of the history of eating out begins with an appetising bill of fare: Mother Song’s fish soup, boiled pork, and honey fritters. The restaurants serving these delicacies did a roaring trade in China in 1275.
In Europe, the restaurant scene didn’t take off until the mid-18th century, when select establishments offering restorative bouillons opened in Paris.
From Faith Muthoni, who serves meals cooked on a landfill site in Nairobi, to the ‘techno-emotional’ cuisine of internationally celebrated restaurant, El Bulli, Ribbat’s dazzling overview of restaurant culture will change your view of dining out for ever. THE LITTLE BIG THINGS by Henry Fraser (Seven Dials £8.99, 176 pp) ONE of a closeknit quartet of sporty brothers, Henry Fraser had a brilliant first year in the sixth form of his new school. Aged 17, and taking his first adult-free holiday with friends in Portugal, the only things on his mind were sun, swimming, and his AS-Level results.
Five days into the trip, he took a running dive into the sea, as he had done many times before. But this time he hit his head on the seabed and surfaced unable to move.
Quick reactions by his friends saved his life, but Henry was paralysed from the shoulders down.
This funny and superbly articulate memoir is an inspiring account of how Henry, with remarkable courage and the support of his family, friends and medical professionals, turned disaster into triumph. THE LOST WAR HORSES OF CAIRO by Grant Hayter-Menzies (Allen £8.99, 224 pp) IT IS not only humans who are the victims of war. Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse reminds us that horses, too, suffered terribly in World War I.
When the conflict was over and the soldiers returned home, one cohort of faithful old combatants was forgotten: the war horses who had served their country so bravely.
Arriving in Cairo in 1930, a Scottish woman, Dorothy Brooke, was appalled to find emaciated equines pulling heavy loads in the merciless sun, branded with the arrow-shaped symbol of the British Army.
There and then she decided to help these once noble animals.
Grant Hayter-Menzies’s moving account of Brooke’s tenacity and practical compassion in founding the charity that still bears her name shows the human treatment of animals at its worst — and best.