Cooking in a Bedsitter

"None of these books competes however as the most influential in my life. One that does is Katharine Whitehorn’s Cooking in a Bedsitter. Sent at the age of 18 to teach English to newly arrived immigrants in Bradford, this was the book that accompanied me into my bedsit – basin, gas ring, tiny fridge. Not all the recipes are good but they kept me alive. Meanwhile, the advice – how a well-regulated household would recognise that socks hanging on the doorknob intimated that sexual relations were in progress within – went far beyond cooking. It was not just a textbook of recipes but a recipe book for life. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter"