The Herald - The Herald Magazine
In a league of their own
now, they were at the time they were written. And so the stories associated with the meals are what draw you in.
Let’s Eat France, a large-format tome weighing 3kg by Francois-Regis Gaudry (Artisan, £36) is probably better described as an encyclopedia. It chronicles more than 1,000 speciality foods, 357 iconic recipes and hundreds of topics and personalities – and all the classic regional recipes.
There’s a history of France in Camembert pack labels, ranging from Cardinal Richelieu to the Second World War and if it sometimes feels like going back to school with a fun-loving French teacher, its real merit is that it reminds us of France’s historic and lasting influence on British cooking – no matter what the Brexiteers may say.
Much closer to home, the Scottish chef Tom Kitchin positively basks in the joys of sourcing hyper-locally, and then deploying his various global influences to create interesting and simply beautiful dishes. In his Fish and Shellfish (Absolute, £26), aimed at the home cook, the various fruits of the Scottish coastline – be they foraged winkles,
cockles or spoots, hand-dived scallops or line-caught mackerel – take centre-stage in various guises here.
A Thai monkfish curry inspired by The Kitchin’s head chef Lachlan
Archibald’s travels to south-east Asia; squid ink and seaweed crispbreads in tribute to the author’s Swedish brother-in-law, the Brooklyn chef Frederik Berselius; and cured mackerel and vegetables on toast, in memory of a meal in Portofino, Italy, are among many clearly presented recipes.
Chef’s impassioned, but relatively short, chat may prove a refreshing relief compared with some other titles. But for me, roasted cod head with a citrus dressing takes the zeitgeist biscuit. It recalls the ancient Scots dish of crappit heid with all its associated myths and legends, while smashing the trend for “forgotten” flavours with a modern twist. And no doubt it will also satisfy the desire to cut costs and reduce food waste in Generation Z and beyond.
ONCE the British sports book industry consisted of cricketers, footballers or rugby players boring the reader with such banality that if it had been a competitive sport the nation would have won Olympic gold.
The landscape has changed to such a degree that it is difficult to define the precise playing field of sports literature. The most obvious example is the brilliant Berlin 1936 by Oliver Hilmes (Bodley Head, £16.99), which I reviewed in these pages without regarding it as a sports book. Yet it was rightly shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year.
It takes the Berlin Olympics as its point of departure but Hilmes wanders with purpose into the dark undergrowth of growing menace in Germany. Heavily researched, it carries a lightness of touch that somehow complements a sense of impending doom.
Similarly, Ali: A Life by Jonathan Eig (Simon and Schuster, £25) cannot restrict itself to purely sporting matters. Ali has been chronicled by the best: Hugh McIlvanney, Norman Mailer, Thomas Hauser and David Remnick. But Eig has produced the first full narrative from birth to death and pointedly refuses to sanctify The Greatest. This is a clear-eyed portrait of one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.
Stephen Kay and David Kynaston’s Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket (Bloomsbury, £20) is also original and departs from the mere retelling of matches and the exploits of heroes. John Arlott and EW Swan were the voices of English cricket for much of the post-war years. This insightful, provocative book gently teases out the differences in their styles, backgrounds and personalities and shows why all this mattered in a society defined by class and in a sport riven by it.
There remain great, exclusively sporting tales to be told, of course. The most compelling is any investigation of Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer of his age, perhaps of all time, who fell to earth with a bump in a miasma of sexual exposes and prescription drugs. Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian’s Tiger Woods
(Simon and Schuster, £20) took three years to research and has that uniquely American feel of contemporary reportage. That is, the style of writing is compromised to depict episodes with a lack of feeling and sometimes a surfeit of information and attribution.
The best Tiger books remain the two by Tom Callahan, and The Big Miss by his former coach Hank Haney, but this latest investigation does add to the Woods story which contains more than enough personal sadness to render sporting triumph ultimately irrelevant. His life has been manufactured, particularly by an obsessive father, and Woods seems distant from the rest of the human race. His fleeting, obsessive sexual encounters have brought only trouble, his golfing commitment has invited physical pain and emotional angst and his hundreds of millions of dollars seem little recompense.
There are signs that Woods is regaining his potency on the golf course. More encouragingly, there is a hope that he can find some sort of fulfilment that does not revolve around striking a ball into a hole.
Honourable mentions must be given to The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee by Paul Gibson (Mercier, £14.50), Deadlines and Darts with Dele by Jonathan Northcroft (Backpage Press, £8.99) and Daniel Gray’s Black Boots and Football Pinks (Bloomsbury, £9.99).
Bedevilled by demons, blessed with talent and open to every shot that life throws at him, Magee is an extraordinary character at the heart of a book that is both bruising and deeply compelling.
Northcroft’s offering is unusual. It is a gathering of his blogs when covering the World Cup for the Sunday Times and gallops through games and airports with time for reflection. He is excellent on why the World Cup was a success, typically astute on the football and revealing on the changes in culture and personality in the England team.