page_title: Jane Grigson
section_title: 1978 to 1985
hierarchical_section_title: Jane Grigson / Biography / 1978 to 1985
context_page_description: Jane Grigson was an English cookery writer. In the latter part of the 20th century she was the author of the food column for The Observer and wrote numerous books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes. Her work proved influential in promoting British food.
  Born in Gloucestershire, Grigson was raised in Sunderland, North East England before studying at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1953 she became an editorial assistant at the publishing company Rainbird, McLean, where she was the research assistant for the poet and writer Geoffrey Grigson. They soon began a relationship which lasted until his death in 1985; they had one daughter, Sophie. Jane worked as a translator of Italian works, and co-wrote books with her husband before writing Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery in 1967. The book was well received and, on its strength, Grigson gained her position at The Observer after a recommendation by the food writer Elizabeth David.
context_section_description: In 1978 Grigson wrote Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book. Reviewing the book in the first edition of Petits Propos Culinaires, Jane Davidson wrote "Erudition and commonsense are not always bedfellows. In this book they snuggle happily together. ... it is light on the eye and invigorating to the imagination." Writing about the first edition, the food writer Robin McDouall said in The Times that the book was "worthy to stand on the shelf by her Fish Cookery and her Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery—praise could go no higher". He commented that the cuisines of many countries were covered, but the main ones were French, Greek, Turkish and Arab. In The New York Times Mimi Sheraton wrote that the book was a "large, handsome volume [with] helpful shopping, storing and cooking information on all the vegetables included in recipes, and the range of dishes is worldwide if strongest on European specialties". Sheraton remarked on the "especially good lentil recipes, wonderful fragrant and bracing soups, and intriguing preparations for lesserknown vegetables such as chayote squash, Jerusalem artichokes and hop shoots". Wilshaw, reviewing the paperback edition for The Guardian, praised Grigson's "warm and erudite style ... an encyclopaedic account of vegetables, their history and their place in modern kitchens". In 1986 The Guardian polled its readers to discover their most indispensable cookery books; Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book took the second place, behind Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking but ahead of other books by David and by Madhur Jaffrey, Delia Smith, Claudia Roden and Julia Child.
  In July 1978 Grigson was interviewed for Desert Island Discs by Roy Plomley. Among her selections were poetry recordings by her husband, one of his books—Notes from an Odd Country—and, as her luxury item, a typewriter and paper.
  Following a series of articles Grigson wrote for her column in The Observer, she published Food With the Famous in 1979, a look at the food eaten by various figures through history. The critic for Kirkus Reviews thought "Grigson's leisurely quotation-studded essays are almost too tantalizing; eventually one begins to miss the factual data (accounts of recipe-adaptations, etc.)" while the reviewer for the Birmingham Daily Post described it as "a charming book about food, rather than a cookery book". From late 1979 to 1980 the chef Anne Willan wrote "French Cookery School", a sixteen-part series in The Observer. The series was collated into a book, The Observer French Cookery School, with Grigson adding information on French cuisine.
  In 1981 Grigson was a participant at the second Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, along with Elizabeth David. The symposium was founded by the food historian Alan Davidson and the social historian Theodore Zeldin.
  Grigson published Jane Grigson's Fruit Book in 1982, a companion book to her Vegetable Book. Prue Leith, the cookery editor for The Guardian, said the book was "a great read and a vital leg-up for the cook temporarily bereft of ideas beyond apple pie. ... There are literary, historical, and travel anecdotes, interleaved with solid information". Reviewing the book in the New York Times, Sheraton wrote that the book was "readable and spirited, with ... [a] diverse combination of practical information, enticing recipes and romantic lore and food history, all tempered with humor and goodwill".
  In 1983 Grigson published The Observer Guide to European Cookery. The paper sent her on what she called "a cook's tour" of European countries in early 1981 to explore and write about their cuisines. Political difficulties and a limited timetable obliged her to miss many countries; those she visited and wrote about were Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Austria and Hungary. Russia had seemed likely to be omission, because of the inefficiency and obstructiveness of Soviet officials, but Pamela Davidson, a friend based in Moscow, stepped into the breach, producing "the most informative part of the book, which tells us exactly what Soviet c
caption: Monet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe; a section of the painting was depicted on the cover of Food with the Famous (1979)
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