British library

14 September

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: You, Food and the Planet

In a special event to launch the British Library Food Season, chef, writer and campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall talks about sustainability, food provenance and wellbeing. As the 21st century brings unprecedented levels of stress to people and planet, Hugh wants to discuss, among other things, the importance of a good meal, a good walk and a good story.
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Live from from his renowned River Cottage base in Dorset, chef, writer and campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall talks to Bee Wilson about sustainability, food provenance and wellbeing. As the new decade brings new levels of anxiety about our health, and the planet’s, Hugh wants to discuss, among other things, the importance of a good meal, a good walk and a good story.

Chaired by Food Season founder and curator Polly Russell.

Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a multi-award-winning writer and broadcaster known for his uncompromising commitment to seasonal, ethically produced food and his concern for the environment. He has earned a huge following through his River Cottage TV series and books, as well as campaigns such as Hugh’s Fish Fight. Most recently he presented War on Plastics for BBC1, joining forces with Anita Rani, Sir David Attenborough and many others to encourage consumers, and challenge businesses and Government, to reduce the plastic in our lives.Hugh’s infectious enthusiasm for SLOW (Seasonal, Local, Organic, Wild) food, and his rigorous questioning of the food industry and it’s methods, has helped fuel the nation’s interest in where our food comes from, who has produced it, and why that matters. “I’m not really interested in the rarest or most expensive foods – so many of them are imported or, out of season anyway” he says. “I’m much more excited about the first discovery apples of the season, or the purple-sprouting broccoli when it comes through in February, or a new cheese being made with ancient know how. That’s what gets me going. That’s what we’ve been celebrating for over 20 years of River Cottage, and that’s the best sort of food to keep us all well too.”

Bee Wilson is a food writer and historian. Her books include Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat and most recently, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, about the psychology of eating and how we can change our diets for the better. She writes on food and other subjects for a wide range of publications including The London Review of Books, The Guardian and The New York Times. She regularly appears on the radio in both the UK and US and is the Chair of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. In The New York Times, Dawn Drzal described Bee Wilson as “a congenial kitchen oracle”.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access.

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15 September

On Restaurants

The politics, challenges, inequalities, changes and motivators facing modern restaurants - and the extra pressures posed by the global pandemic on dining culture. With chefs and restaurateurs Asma Khan (Darjeeling Express), Tim Anderson (Nanban) and Evening Standard food critic Jimi Famurewa. Chaired by Tim Hayward.
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Join leading chefs and restaurateurs as they discuss the politics, challenges, inequalities, changes and motivators facing dining culture and the extra pressures caused by the global pandemic. With Dr Asma Khan, whose all-women team at her acclaimed restaurant Darjeeling Express have challenged a traditionally male arena. Alongside her are Tim Anderson of Brixton’s Nanban, and Jimi Famurewa, restaurant critic for ES Magazine. Chaired by Tim Hayward.

Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Tim Anderson is a US born chef and restaurateur who was crowned the youngest ever winner of the BBC1 show MasterChef. He has lived in London since 2008, and before that spent some years in southern Japan. His restaurant Nanban in Brixton is the result of his lifelong obsession with Japanese food and culture. He studied Japanese food at Occidental college in Los Angeles and has said that when he was deciding which Japanese city to teach English in, his choice was based on which city had the best ramen. He published his debut cookbook Nanban: Japanese Soul Food in 2015.

Jimi Famurewa is a writer, editor and broadcaster who contributes to publications including The Guardian, Time Out and Wired UK and, since autumn 2018, has been the restaurant critic for ES Magazine. Previously, he was Features Editor at ShortList Magazine for five years and Features Executive at The Evening Standard, where he edited the paper’s weekly food section. During his tenure at ES Magazine, Jimi has covered everything from blockbuster hotel openings to underpraised West African institutions, read some ‘brisket erotica’ (his words) at the hit food culture celebration Voices At The Table, and also established himself as a regular guest critic on BBC One’s MasterChef. He is the author of Family London (Frances Lincoln) – a guide to the capital’s parent-friendly attractions, activities and restaurants – and, in 2017, he was shortlisted for the Guardian/4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize.

Asma Khan moved to Cambridge from Kolkata (Calcutta) in 1991. She is Rajput on her father’s side and Bengali on her mother’s. She studied, but cooking was her passion and in 2012 she opened a supper club in her home. Darjeeling Express the restaurant opened in 2017 in London’s Soho, where an all-women team of housewives has run the kitchen from day one. On Sundays, when Darjeeling Express is closed, Khan offers free use of the premises to women who are aspiring chefs and restaurateurs who would like to host supper clubs. Khan’s restaurants support a non-profit, Second Daughters Fund, which encourages families in India to celebrate the births of second daughters.

Her cookbook Asma’s Indian Kitchen appeared in October 2018. The book was the winner in the UK category for food publishing in Indian cuisine in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. Asma’s Indian Kitchen was also shortlisted for best debut cookbook in the Fortnum & Mason 2019 awards. Asma is the first British chef to feature in Netflix’s Chef’s Table. The series’ sixth season, which includes Asma’s episode, was nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Documentary section. The Evening Standard listed Asma in The Progress 1000 as one of London’s most influential people 2019. Asma has been included in the eighth edition of the GG2 Power List –profiling Britain’s 101 most influential Asians.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access.

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21 September

Claudia Roden and Simon Schama: The Book of Jewish Food

One of our greatest food writers, Claudia Roden, is joined by historian Professor Simon Schama to reflect on the history, culture and traditions of Jewish food.
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Join one of our greatest food writers Claudia Roden alongside Simon Schama as they discuss the history, culture and traditions of Jewish food.
Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Claudia Roden is a cookbook writer and anthropologist based in the UK. She grew up in Cairo and studied in both Paris and London. She has published multiple bestsellers including the international award-winning The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand and Vilnato the Present Day and she revolutionised Western attitudes to Middle Eastern cuisines in 1968 with her bestselling cookbook, A Book of Middle Eastern Food. Other books include Coffee; Picnic: The Complete Guide to Outdoor Food, Mediterranean Cookery; The Food of Italy, Claudia Roden’s Invitation to Mediterranean Cooking, Tamarind and Saffron: Favourite Recipes from the Middle East, Arabesque: Sumptuous Food from Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon; and The Food of Spain. Aside from her writing career Roden has presented cookery shows on the BBC and she is co-chair of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University; the author of 19 books including Landscape and Memory, and writer/ presenter of over 50 TV films for the BBC. His latest series, The Romantics and Us, will air on BBC2 in mid September.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link to join in their confirmation email.

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26 September

Food Futures: The Choices Facing Us Now

Through this remarkable year, the key place of food in our lives has been put into greater prominence than ever. Supply chains and supermarkets, health and home cooking have been among our most vital concerns. What have we learned and how are things set to change? With Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London, food and farming actionist Dee Woods and Dan Saladino of The Food Programme.
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Through this remarkable year, the key place of food in our lives has been put into greater prominence than ever. Supply chains and supermarkets, health and home cooking have been among our most vital concerns. With Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London, food and farming actionist Dee Woods and Dan Saladino of The Food Programme.

Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy at City University of London, which he founded in 1994 and directed until 2016. For the last 25 years he has researched, written and lectured on the role of policy in shaping and responding to the food system, particularly in relation to health, environment, social justice, the political economy and consumer culture. He previously spent seven years as a hill farmer, an experience which has shaped his work ever since. His most recent book, Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them, was published in March 2020 and takes stock of the UK food system: where it comes from, what we eat, its impact, fragilities and strengths.

Dee Woods is a food and farming action-ist and campaigner, who advocates for good food for all and a more just and equitable food system, challenging the systemic barriers that impact marginalised communities, farmers and food producers. Her work meets at the nexus of poverty and hunger, human rights, food sovereignty, community development, policy, research, climate and social justice. Dee is co-founder of Granville Community Kitchen in South Kilburn. A previous BBC Food and Farming Awards winner, Dee sits on the GLA London Food Board, the steering group of People Food Power and is a co-editor of A People's Food Policy. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at CAWR, Coventry University, member of the Food Ethics Council and the coordinating group of the Landworkers Alliance, co-chair of the Independent Food Aid Network, (IFAN) and a trustee of Sustain.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access.

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Beyond the Bank: Creating Community and Culture Through Food

Meet some of those whose food projects aim to build cohesion and hope amidst isolation and desperation. Including Barney Houghton of Bristol’s Square Meal Foundation and Mary Brennan of Community Unity in Leeds. Chaired by journalist Stephen Armstrong, author of The New Poverty.
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Meet some of those who’s food projects aim to build cohesion and hope amidst isolation and desperation. The panel includes Barney Houghton of Bristol’s Square Meal Foundation, Mary Brennan of Community Unity in Leeds, Jess Thompson, founder of Migrateful and Bana Gora, CEO of the Muslim Women’s Council. Chaired by journalist Stephen Armstrong, author of The New Poverty.

Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Mary Brennan set up Community Unity, a neighbourhood group that runs a lunch club in the Cross Green area of Leeds and created a garden on a disused railway bridge where the community can pick their own food.Bana Gora has over 20 years’ experience working in the charitable and not for profit sector such as domestic violence services in Keighley and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and has been involved with social policy and community engagement on a local and national level. Bana founded the Muslim Women’s Council in 2009 with a group of like-minded women, who aim make Bradford a vibrant city by understanding and responding to the complex challenges facing its inhabitants and by celebrating its strengths.Jess Thompson spent two and a half years working on the front line to support migrants and refugees in Ceuta, Morocco, at Dunkirk refugee camp in France, and in London, when discussions with refugee women at a Time Bank project in Tower Hamlets led her to set Migrateful. Migrateful helps refugees and asylum seekers on their journey to employment and independence and promotes integration. It runs cookery classes led by migrant chefs struggling to integrate and access employment due to legal and linguistic barriers. Migrateful currently runs 15 cookery classes per week taught by over 25 refugee chefs in London, Kent and Bristol.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access.

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29 September

Sitopia: How Food can save the World

Food shapes everything: our bodies, habits, homes, landscapes, cities, politics and economics. We can make revolutionary change simply by properly understanding and valuing it. With urban visionary Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City and Sitopia, and food campaigner and CEO of Sustain, Kath Dalmeny.
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Food shapes everything: our bodies, habits, homes, landscapes, cities, politics and economics. It is seldom out of the news, whether it’s industrial production destroying the planet or modern diets causing a crisis in public health. But what is the potential for transforming the food system, and thereby to creating a healthy world with a healthy population?

With urban visionary Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City and Sitopia, and food campaigner and CEO of Sustain, Kath Dalmeny.

Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Carolyn Steel is a leading thinker on food and cities. Her award-winning 2008 book Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives is an international best-seller and her concept of sitopia (food-place) has gained broad recognition across a wide range of fields in academia, industry and the arts. A London-based architect, lecturer and writer, Carolyn studied at Cambridge University and has since been a visiting lecturer at Cambridge, London Metropolitan and Wageningen Universities and at the London School of Economics, where she was the inaugural Studio Director of the Cities Programme. Her lecture course Food and the City, given from 2002-2012 at the Cambridge University School of Architecture, was the first of its kind. A non-executive director of Kilburn Nightingale Architects, Carolyn has completed several major buildings, including the Embassy Theatre for the Central School of Speech and Drama. A Rome scholar in 1995-6, Carolyn is in international demand as a speaker and her 2009 TED talk has received more than one million views. Her second book, Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World, was published by Chatto & Windus in March 2020.

Kath Dalmeny is chief executive of the charity Sustain and a long-serving member of the London Food Board. She is a campaigner and organiser, helping people and organisations to speak up for better food, farming and fishing. Working with what she describes as “my wonderful campaign colleagues”, Kath has been instrumental in persuading three successive Mayors of London to support thousands of community food gardens; caterers that serve one billion meals per year to serve verifiably sustainable fish; Westminster government to introduce mandatory standards for meals served in schools and hospitals; and HM Treasury to introduce a sugary drinks tax, with £0.5 billion ring-fenced to fund children’s health promotion. She is currently preoccupied with finding ways to help government, local authorities and communities to halt the rise in need for charitable food banks and fix the upstream causes of household food security, securing everyone’s Right to Food. She is also supporting the Sustain alliance to rise to the challenges of the climate and nature emergency. Kath was identified as one of 10 most influential campaigners in 2018 by The Right Ethos; the 2006 Caroline Walker Trust Lifetime Award and, in 2016, an International Giraffe Appreciation Society award for 'sticking her neck out in the public interest'.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access.

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3 October

Mood Food: Jack Monroe and Kimberley Wilson

A frank and informative event about food, diet and mental health. With food-writer Jack Monroe and psychologist Kimberley Wilson.
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Jack Monroe has transformed debates about food, poverty, mental health and more in the UK since her breakthrough Cooking on a Bootstrap blog. Now she is one of our most popular food writers, but still offering a very personal take on modern life. Monroe talks to Kimberley Wilson, a chartered psychologist whose work looks at the role food and lifestyle plays in our mental health, including disordered eating, the gut-brain axis and our emotional relationship with food. Guardian writer Zoe Williams chairs this frank and informative event about food, diet and mental health.Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Jack Monroe is a food writer and anti-poverty campaigner. Jack started writing her blog, A Girl Called Jack, in February 2012, in response to a local councillor who claimed that ‘druggies, drunks and single mums are ruining the High Street.’ What started as a local politics blog developed into budget food and recipes, which were picked up with interest by the national press as she detailed living with her son on a food budget of just £10 a week. Her new book Good Food for Bad Days came out in May 2020 and brings together seventy-five comforting and affordable recipes to make when you’re low in spirits.

Jack is an active campaigner, fronting a petition with Unite, The Trussell Trust and The Mirror demanding politicians debate the causes of foodbank use and hunger in Britain. Jack is an out lesbian woman, and in 2014 was listed in The Independent On Sunday’s Pink List at number 19.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access.

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River Cottage: More Taste, Less Waste

We all know that we need to reduce food waste but in practice it’s often difficult to do. Food-writer Melissa Hemsley and Gelf Alderson, executive chef at River Cottage, discuss the issues and demonstrate solutions for minimising food waste at home.
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We all know that we need to reduce food waste but in practice it’s often difficult to do. Food writer Melissa Hemsley and Gelf Alderson, Executive Chef at River Cottage, discuss the issues and demonstrate solutions for minimising food waste at home.

Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Melissa Hemsley is one-half of the Hemsleys, the bestselling authors of The Art of Eating Well and Good + Simple with a café HEMSLEY + HEMSLEY at Selfridges in London. Her first solo bestseller, Eat Happy, focussed on fast, delicious 30-minute recipes for busy nights in 2018. Melissa champions fuss-free, big-flavoured food and shows how anyone can enjoying cooking affordable, healthy recipes. In April Vogue.co.uk announced Melissa Hemsley’s new fortnightly column, Eat, Think, Grow, where she serves up practical ideas and inspiration for everyone who wants to leave a more positive impact on the planet. In 2019 Melissa launched her first series of community events around people and planet called The Sustainability Sessions, live events with panels including Fearne Cotton, Grace Dent, Skye Gyngell and Bryony Gordon. Melissa is also a proud supporter and volunteer for the food waste charity The Felix Project, The Prince’s Trust, Mental Health Mates, Future Dreams, Women Supporting Women, Cook for Syria (Unicef), Headtalks.com and is a judge of the Soil Association (Best of Organic awards), the Guild of Fine Foods and the YBFs (Young British Foodies) and the host of the 2019 Sustainable Restaurant Association awards.

Gelf Alderson is executive chef at River Cottage, and follows its food philosophy – seasonal, local, organic and wild. He says he wants the ingredients to speak for themselves and his cooking style is about using fresh, honest ingredients and not over complicating dishes. He is passionate about sustainability and reducing waste.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access.

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6 October

Cookery Book Collections

A snapshot of how cookery books have been created, used and collected through history and their relationship with wider culture.
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Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Curators from three different libraries pick out a small selection of varied cookery books from their collections. From Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera dell’arte del cucinare (1570) to Catherine Buckton’s Food and Home Cookery (1890) and Len Deighton’s Action Cook Book (1965), this online event will take a snapshot look at how cookery books have been created, used and collected through history and their relationship with wider culture.

The curators featured are from the British Library, which has one of its two sites in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, Leeds Library Service and Special Collections at the University of Leeds. This event has been brought together as part of #CollectionsUnited and the British Library Food Season.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access.

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9 October

Feeding Our Children

The way we think and feel about food as children can dramatically influence our lifelong relationship with it. Consider the politics and practicalites of feeding children with award winning food writer and chair of TastEd Bee Wilson, chef Gita Mistry, headteacher Jason O’Rourke and nutritionist Anna S Ólafsdóttir.
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Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Bee Wilson is a food writer and historian. Her books include Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat and most recently, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, about the psychology of eating and how we can change our diets for the better. She writes on food and other subjects for a wide range of publications including The London Review of Books, The Guardian and The New York Times. She regularly appears on the radio in both the UK and US and is the Chair of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. In The New York Times, Dawn Drzal described Bee Wilson as “a congenial kitchen oracle”.

Gita Mistry was crowned Britain’s Best Home Cook in the final of BBC 2′s Eating with the Enemy, in front of judges including Jay Rayner and Charles Campion. As a young child, Gita used to watch her mother dry, grind, blend and store a whole array of herbs and spices in her special spice tins. Gita absorbed the passion and found her vocation. She researched and uncovered forgotten Garamasala recipes and traditions that had been handed down through generations while designing and creating honest home-cooked dishes that keep true to her philosophy of cooking with passion.

Jason O’Rourke is the headteacher of Washingborough Academy, Lincolnshire. During the 10 years that he has been there, the school has gained national and international recognition for the curriculum it has developed, which puts healthy living and food education at the forefront of children’s learning. One of Jason’s first transformations when he arrived at the school was to create a children’s kitchen. It sits in the heart of the school and everything is at a child’s height. It is used to teach children cookery so that by the time they leave primary school they are able to create 10 meals.

Anna S Ólafsdóttir is Professor of Nutrition Sciences at the School of Education, University of Iceland. She has a PhD in Nutrition Science from University of Iceland and a master’s degree in the same subject from University of Vienna, Austria. Her research includes dietary behaviour in relation to weight management, body composition and lifestyle. She has researched the value of school meals and family-focused treatments for obesity. She is currently working on a taste education intervention programme for families with fussy eaters, focusing on children with ADHD and autism spectrum disorders. Her studies have covered everything from nutrition in pregnancy and breast milk composition to health and quality of life in the elderly.

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13 October

Ken Hom’s ‘Stir-Fried Life’ with Fuchsia Dunlop

Chef, author and presenter Ken Hom has been hugely influential in developing understanding around the world of what Chinese food really is and how to cook it. He talks to award winning food writer Fuschia Dunlop about his remarkable life and career and they share perspectives on Chinese food, both inside and outside its homeland.
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Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Ken Hom OBE is the man who showed the British how to cook Asian food. He is the author of almost 40 books, which have inspired millions of home cooks around the world. And in Britain alone, the Ken Hom wok is in one in seven kitchens. His first book on Chinese cookery techniques was published in 1981, and his Ken Hom’s Chinese Cookery is the book that many still regard as the ‘bible’ for anyone who wanted to learn Chinese cuisine. It has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide. At the time of publication, it made publishing history by being the first non-fiction book with a first printing of 350,000. In 2009, the BBC celebrated the 25th anniversary of the book, which continues to be a top seller after more than three decades in print. He has written almost 40 books and presented seven television series.

Fuschia Dunlop is an food writer and cook who specialises in Chinese cuisine, especially that of Sichuan, and was the first westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu. She is the author of five books, including the autobiographical Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper. She speaks, reads and writes Chinese.

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14 October

Black British Food Stories: Origins, Journeys and Junctions

Join food writer and BBC Good Food columnist Melissa Thompson for a discussion about Black food and the politics, potential and problems it faces in Britain. With Tokunbo Koiki, founder of London Africa Food Week, Riaz Phillips, author of Belly Full and Community Comfort, and Zoe Adjonyoh, founder of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen and the Black Book, the agency for people of colour in the food industry.
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Food Season supported by KitchenAid

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access.

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16 October

Will COVID-19 change our relationship with food forever?

Pandemic lockdown put into sharp focus the challenges and pressure-points on where and how we get our food. This event in partnership with Borough Market considers how consumers have access to ‘good’ food, ‘healthy’ food, ‘cheap’ food in the midst of COVID-19 and the role of supermarkets, local markets, delivery, small producers, community shops and more. With managing director at Borough Market Darren Henaghan, founding director of the Sustainable Food Trust Patrick Holden, food writer Jenny Linford and youth activist Tasha Mhakayakora. Chaired by Food Season guest director Angela Clutton.
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Lockdown and the COVID-19 pandemic have put the challenges and pressure-points of where, and how, we get our food into sharp focus. This event in partnership with Borough Market considers how consumers have access to ‘good’, ‘healthy’ or ‘cheap’ food in our mid/post COVID-19 world, and explores the role of supermarkets, local markets, community shops, delivery services, small producers and more.

With managing director at Borough Market Darren Henaghan; founding director of the Sustainable Food Trust Patrick Holden; food writer Jenny Linford and Biteback 2030 youth activist Tasha Mhakayakora. Chaired by Food Season guest director Angela Clutton.

Food Season supported by KitchenAid

Speakers
Darren Henaghan is Managing Director of Borough Market.

Patrick Holden is founder and chief executive of the Sustainable Food Trust, an organisation working internationally to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable food systems. Between 1995 and 2010 he was director of the Soil Association, during which time he pioneered the development of UK and international organic standards, policy incentives for organic production and the organic market. His policy advocacy is underpinned by his practical experience in agriculture on his 100 hectare holding, now the longest established organic dairy farm in Wales, where he produces a raw milk cheddar style cheese from his 80 native Ayrshire cows. Patrick is a frequent broadcaster and speaker, was awarded the CBE for services to organic farming in 2005 and an Ashoka Fellowship in 2016.

Jenny Linford is a food writer and author of over 15 books including The Missing Ingredient - the Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour, an innovative exploration of time, the ‘invisible’ ingredient, and The Chef’s Library, featuring the favourite cookbook choices of over seventy acclaimed international chefs. Her first book Food Lovers’ London - a cosmopolitan guide to London’s food shops - was originally published in 1991 and is still in print seven editions later. Her journalism has appeared in The Sunday Times, Delicious, Modern Farmer and the National Trust magazine. She is a longstanding member of the Guild of Food Writers.

Tasha Mhakayakora is co-chair of the Bite Back 2030 Youth Board. Tasha is 18, from Lewisham and is an asylum seeker from Zimbabwe. She is passionate about changing the way we talk about obesity and creating equal opportunities for everyone to have access to healthier food options. In 2015 Tasha encouraged her school to sign up to the Sugar Smart Pledge and is keen to join Bite Back and finish what she started. Bite Back 2030 is a youth led movement who want healthy, nutritious food to be an option for every child and young person, because it matters to their health. Their focus is leveraging the power of our communities and reaching out to ensure no one is forgotten when it comes to food, no matter where they live, whilst learning lessons from COVID-19 and using them to re-design a food system that works fairly for everyone.

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20 October

Tom Kerridge in Conversation

Tom Kerridge, Michelin-starred chef, bestselling author and BBC presenter, in conversation from the legendary Hand and Flowers talking about his life, career and the impending release of his latest book, based on recipes from the The Hand and Flowers - the first (and only) pub in the world to acquire two Michelin stars.
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Food Season supported by KitchenAid

About Tom Kerridge
Tom Kerridge worked as a chef in restaurants across Britain before deciding to set out on his own and take over a rundown pub in the quiet Buckinghamshire town of Marlow. He opened The Hand and Flowers with his wife Beth in 2005. Near to the pub they also have The Shed, a private dining room by The Hand and Flowers team seating only nine people.

In 2014 he opened The Coach, his second pub in Marlow, which within its first year of trading received three AA Rosettes, was voted third-best pub in Britain by the Top 50 Gastropub Awards, and was awarded a Michelin star in 2017. In September 2017, Tom opened The Butcher’s Tap in Marlow, which is a fully operational butcher and pub under one roof. In October 2018, Tom opened Kerridge’s Bar & Grill – his first restaurant in the capital – at Corinthia London. This was followed by The Bull & Bear in Stock Exchange Hotel, Manchester, which opened in November 2019.

As well as hosting four of his own BBC television series, most recently Lose Weight & Get Fit, Tom has been at the helm of the BBC’s Bake Off: Crème de la Crème and Food & Drink, and has also hosted Saturday Kitchen and Top of the Shop. His previous bestselling books include Proper Pub Food, Tom Kerridge’s Best Ever Dishes, Tom’s Table, Tom Kerridge’s Dopamine Diet, Lose Weight for Good, Tom Kerridge’s Fresh Start, and Lose Weight & Get Fit.

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