Tom Parker Bowles on great cookbooks Encyclopedic, magisterial, elegant and quite brilliant, David Thompson's Thai Food (2002) is certainly the best cookbook written in English on this much-abused and misunderstood cuisine. There's no dumbing down for Western palates, nor half-witted short cuts. This is the real thing, one of the greatest cookbooks of all time. I love Jane Grigson for her sensible, pragmatic prose, fine scholarship and endlessly good recipes. Her English Food (1974) is one of the great works on our native food, at once wise and utterly readable. Sichuan Cookery (2003) by Fuchsia Dunlop tells you all you need to know about this fine and often-fiery Chinese regional cuisine. Dunlop combines serious scholarship with faultless prose. And the recipes are brilliant too. Good Things in England (1932) by Florence White is an essential compendium of regional British recipes, compiled by White in the early Thirties, when many great dishes were in danger of dying out. Without White, many of them would have been lost forever. To finish off the list, Good Savouries (1935) by Ambrose Heath: you have to love any book that devotes itself to this great British treat. Angels on horseback, devilled kidneys, cod's roe on toast, anchovy biscuits... This was the course served between the main and pudding, and the last gasp of proper tucker before the sugared onslaught began.