Cream Tea and Meet Annabel Abbs

Join us at The Stripey Badger for a cream tea with Lesley McEvoy

Annabel Abbs is coming to The Stripey Badger on the 20th September to tell us  all about her book The Language of Food and the life of Eliza Acton.

Tickets for this event are £5 and include a scone with cream and jam and a cup of tea or coffee.

Tickets can be bought in The Stripey Badger or online here

The Murder Mile

Eliza Acton, despite having never before boiled an egg, became one of  the world's most successful cookery writers, revolutionizing cooking and  cookbooks around the world. Her story is fascinating, uplifting and  truly inspiring.

Told in alternate voices by the award-winning  author of The Joyce Girl, and with recipes that leap to life from the  page, The Language of Food by Annabel Abbs is the most thought-provoking  and page-turning historical novel you'll read this year, exploring the  enduring struggle for female freedom, the power of female friendship,  the creativity and quiet joy of cooking and the poetry of food, all  while bringing Eliza Action out of the archives and back into the public eye.

1835. Eliza Acton is a poet who dreams of seeing her words in print. But when she takes her new manuscript to a publisher, she's told that  'poetry is not the business of a lady'. Instead, they want her to write a  cookery book. That's what readers really want from women. England is awash with exciting new ingredients, from spices to exotic  fruits. But no one knows how to use them Eliza leaves the offices  appalled. But when her father is forced to flee the country for  bankruptcy, she has no choice but to consider the proposal. Never having cooked before, she is determined to learn and to discover,  if she can, the poetry in recipe writing. To assist her, she hires  seventeen-year-old Ann Kirby, the impoverished daughter of a  war-crippled father and a mother with dementia.  Over the course of ten  years, Eliza and Ann developed an unusual friendship - one that crossed  social classes and divides - and, together, they broke the mould of  traditional cookbooks and changed the course of cookery writing forever.