The UK writer William Sitwell discusses a life of writing about food

MasterChef UK judge and restaurant critic William Sitwell joins Richard Fidler for a conversation about a life in food.. A highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.

William Sitwell is a British food and travel writer, MasterChef UK judge and restaurant critic for The Telegraph. Known as much for his love of authentic cuisine as his witty, sometimes provocative and occasionally controversial views, he joins ABC Radio host Richard Fidler for a conversation about a life in food.

In his most recent book, The Restaurant: A History of Dining Out, he takes readers on a gastronomic journey over the last 2000 years - venturing into the inns and taverns of Pompeii before their destruction in AD79; revealing the tumultuous emergence of fine dining during the French Revolution; and exploring the result of technological innovations on the rise of McDonald's.

Hear William Sitwell in this highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival

The result is a lively, discursive amble through the social and culinary history of eating out, ranging from the influence of Elizabeth David, to the effect of the dissolution of the monasteries, and the revolution in UK cuisine since the 1960s.

As the editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine (until his departure after he made a joke about "killing vegans"), Sitwell broadened the range of commentators and contributors. But his attempt to get Sir Les Patterson (one of the many alter egos of Australian comedian Barry Humphries, creator of the more famous Dame Edna Everage) fell at the last hurdle.

"I was very privileged to know Barry Humphries since he became a friend of my family's. He was a fan of my grandfather Sir Sacheverell Sitwell . I remember staying at my grandfather's house and I saw these postcards from Edna on the kitchen table. My grandfather's housekeeper Gertrude was talking about how this strange person kept on writing to my grandfather calling herself Dame Edna Everage. This was in the late '80s when Edna ruled the airwaves. She was the Queen of the Saturday night's TV schedules. But Gertrude and her husband only really watched wrestling, and switched the television off in the evening."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details