Elisabeth Luard

I'm a writer, illustrator and broadcaster with some twenty-five books to my name, including a couple of doorstopper novels and four (working on a fifth!) memoirs-with-recipes. Born during the Blitz in central London, I've lived or studied or worked in Latin America, Spain, Italy, France, the Hebrides and Wales (in that order). In the '70's, I brought up my young family (now with grown-up children of their own) in a remote valley in Andalucia, which led to an earlier career as a natural history artist, a couple of shows in London's Tryon Gallery and botanical work for the national archives at Kew. Cookbooks include European Peasant Cookery, The Flavours of Andalucia, Preserving, Pickling and Potting, Sacred Food, and A Cook's Year in a Welsh Farmhouse (serialised in Country Living magazine). Novels (pub. 1980's) are Emerald and Marguerite. Memoirs to date are Family Life, Still life, My Life as A Wife, and Squirrel Pie. After 25 years in the wilds of Wales, I downsized in 2017 from a rambling farmhouse in the foothills of the Cambrians and am now happily home and dry in a one-person studio flat in West London. I've contributed a cookery-column toThe Oldie magazine for about 20 years, did a stint at The Field and Daily Telegraph as cookery writer, and sometimes write on family matters in the Daily Mail. I've just retired after six years as Chair of The Oxford Food Symposium but remain enthusiastically involved. Meanwhile I've just started (January 2023) a newsletter on Substack, Elisabeth Luard's Cookstory, which allows me to combine my work as an artist as well as a writer.