This charming little book was first published in 1956 when people in England were still enduring post-war restrictions on both travelling and eating. As Lesley Blanch says in her introduction to a later edition ‘benign fate whisked me elsewhere to follow less restricted ways, travelling widely and eating wildly’. She said: ‘I don’t belong in England, I don’t belong anywhere, it is rather restful - I have met everybody and known nobody’. Seductive and piquant like its author, this is ‘an appetizer for enthusiastic beginners’ rather than a basic cookbook. Lesley Blanch’s gastronomic world tour includes eighty recipes each prefaced by an account of where they were first tasted, or with some amusing anecdote.