The Essay

Joanna Robertson's earliest childhood memory is that of the baker calling at noon each day, with a basket full of fragrant buns, cakes and bread. It was the first indication of what was to develop into a lifelong love affair with food. For Joanna, food has never just been about nourishment. It has shaped her life in highly personal as well as professional ways, with surprising, funny or poignant results. So much so, that telling her food stories in these Essays amounts to sharing an intimate and revealing autobiography, with deeply personal insights into her life, the places she has lived and worked in, and the people she has met through food.In the final programme, Joanna is living in Paris. Fortune has smiled on her in the shape of a second daughter, but when it comes to food, her luck seems to have run out, as neither her children's school lunches nor local restaurants' menus live up to Joanna's expectations which had been stoked by food writers of the calibre of Elizabeth David and MFK Fisher whom Joanna