Nigel Slater on writing

Over the last three weeks we’ve been publishing extracts from Nigel Slater’s Eating For England: here’s the trouble with tipping; the dubious delights of entertaining aged relatives; and an ode to good British fish and chips.

Eating for England is a collection of short, often witty essays about the British and their relationship with food – featuring rice pudding, custard creams, roast dinners and more. It’s a very different book from the Kitchen Diaries, his most recent collection of recipes, and it’s different again from Toast, his childhood memoirs.

Nigel’s an incredibly versatile writer – so what goes into all these books? How are they put together? What role is played by the editor? Here Nigel talks about the pleasures, and the difficulties, of his writing life.