Guild of Food Writers | British Food: A History

Tag Archives: Guild of Food Writers

03/07/2024 · 6:43 pm

‘Before Mrs Beeton’ wins at the Guild of Food Writer’s Awards 2024

Hello there everyone! Just a very quick post with some slightly belated good news. My biography of Elizabeth Raffald, Before Mrs Beeton: Elizabeth Raffald, England’s Most Influential Housekeeper won the Best Book category at this year’s Guild of Food Writer’s Awards. I’m still rather bowled over about it, I must say, and certainly wasn’t expecting to win, despite winning the Best First Book award last year, in fact with the Raffald book, I thought it (superficially) niche in the big and varied world of food writing.

The evening was such good fun, the awards ceremony itself hosted by Leyla Kazim. Other notable award wins from the point of view of history were the Lifetime Achievement Award for Dame Prue Leith (with special appearance from Sandi Toksvig!) and the Newcomer award which went to Scots food historian Peter Gilchrist. I shall be trying my best to get him on the podcast at some point this year.

Anyway, off I pop to write a proper post for you all. xxx

Selection of photographs from the evening (photos: Martin Behrman, Behrman Media)

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A Guild of Food Writers’ Award win!

I have some very exciting news: A Dark History of Sugar did not only get nominated for the Guild of Food Writers’ Awards 2023 in the Best First Book category, but it also won! Bloody hell!

The other nominees in the category were Chocolate Cake for Imaginary Lives by Genevieve Jenner and Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many by Jeremy Lee; both brilliant books so I certainly did not expect to win.

Some past podcast guests were there at the ceremony: Diane Purkiss, who appeared on the podcast recently to talk about her book English Food: A People’s History won her category Best Food Book. Nominated in that same category was Felicity Cloake for her brilliant breakfast Odyssey Red Sauce, Brown Sauce. Scroll to the foot of the post to listen to those podcast episodes.

It was a fantastic night. The awards were hosted by chef and Saturday Kitchen presenter Matt Tebbutt, and the award itself was sponsored by the excellent Sea Sisters. Collecting the award was all a bit of a blur as the adrenaline was pumping somewhat, but the guild just released the official photographs (taken by Martin Behrman) so there is actual evidence of it occurring! There were some food-writing royalty at the ceremony too in the shape of Dames Mary Berry and Delia Smith. I was starstruck, let me tell you.

Although I am still reeling, I need to crack on with writing the current book. One shouldn’t rest on one’s laurels now, should they? I’ll be back with a proper blog post soon. Cheerio! x