This book, the second memoir from the restaurant critic Grace Dent, will make you hungry. Dent is both a Guardian columnist and a Masterchef judge but like many of the best food writers – Nigella Lawson is another – did not start her career writing about food. Dent has written eleven novels for young adults and had a much-missed column called World of Lather about soap operas first.
Comfort Eating the memoir shares its name with the podcast on which she interviews celebrities about the snacks they eat behind closed doors and plenty more besides. From Siobhan McSweeney and her snack of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk with cheese and onion Taytos and a swig of Guinness to Stephen Fry with his tinned fish, it is is a revelatory and intimate podcast. The book is far cosier than her previous memoir, Hungry (2020) which was a surprisingly profound account of her life so far – as she says it reflected on both “Findus Crispy Pancakes and Alzheimer’s disease.”
