HOW TO FEED A DICTATOR

SADDAM HUSSEIN, IDI AMIN, ENVER HOXHA, FIDEL CASTRO AND POL POT THROUGH THE EYES OF THEIR COOKS

WITOLD SZABLOWSKI, TRANS ANTONIA LLOYDJONES

Penguin, 272pp, £14.99, ebook £9.49

‘Maybe you can’t see monstrosity in its full monstrousness when you’re making breakfast for it every day,’ Jennifer Reese ruminated in the Washington Post. For this ‘fascinating’ collection of essays Szablowski ‘tracked down the cooks who baked birthday cakes and roasted goats for a rogues’ gallery of tyrants’, she continued. ‘The cooks themselves are just as interesting as they tell their life stories and reckon with – or refuse to reckon with – the role they might have played, however small, in abetting tyranny.’ ‘Szablowski is a limpid and gently brilliant storyteller,’ Wendell Steavenson enthused in the Financial Times. Iona Mclaren in the Telegraph found the book Idi Amin ‘riveting’. ‘Since their lives were dependent on a faultless grasp of their masters’ moods and appetites, these cooks knew the tyrants ... inside out.’

Mr K, chef to Enver Hoxha and too terrified even 35 years later to reveal his identity, prided himself on ‘the sugar-free desserts he concocted for his diabetic boss’. ‘I knew how to improve his temper ... Who knows how many people’s lives I saved that way?’

As for Idi Amin’s alleged cannibalism, his chef Otonde Odera swears, ‘I never saw any meat of unfamiliar origin, or that I hadn’t bought myself, in the fridges and cold stores under my charge.’

Saddam Hussein liked to barbecue meat for his friends and then smother it in Tabasco to see if anyone would complain. His chef Abu Ali remarked without irony, ‘Saddam was the only good person in the entire al-tikriti family ... I don’t know how he survived among them.’ Pol Pot’s party-line-toeing cook Yong Moeun ‘denies the Khmer Rouge leader hurt a fly’. Fidel Castro, addicted to dairy, would eat up to 20 ice creams a day.

‘This book tells all that we know about the power of good suppers, whoever they are fed to,’ Rose Prince concluded in the Spectator. ‘Dictators’ stomachs offer few clues to their souls,’ opined James Marriott in the Times. ‘But that doesn’t stop this epically well-researched book being a lot of fun to read. Just enjoy it with a pinch of salt.’