#6Degrees of Separation From The Naked Chef to These Days

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation!

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees.

This month’s starting book is The Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver. Although I’m familiar with Jamie Oliver from his television programmes, I’ve never owned one of his books and I’m not even sure I’ve ever used one of his recipes.

The Language of Food by Annabel Abbs tells the story of Eliza Acton, a pioneer who transformed the way people wrote about and thought about food. In developing her recipes she anticipated many of the trends we see today such as a focus on seasonality, the reduction of food waste and an emphasis on healthy nutritious home-cooked food. There is a selection of Eliza’s recipes at the end of the book.

Another book which has a selection of recipes at the end of the book is A Ration Book Christmas by Jean Fullerton.  Featuring the Brogan family of London’s East End, it’s set at the height of the Blitz. Despite food shortages and rationing, the women of the family are determined to put together a traditional Christmas, even if that does mean a bit of invention when it comes to ingredients and a lot of queuing.

Mr Bunting At War by Robert Greenwood, part of the Imperial War Museum’s Wartime Classics series, is another fictional account of living through the Second World War but having been written in 1941 it’s very true to life, even if it could be argued it’s a propaganda piece designed to maintain morale. It contains lots of detail of domestic life in the Bunting household – Mr Bunting’s perpetual war on waste, his love of a good sausage roll, his incomprehension at his daughter Julie’s vegetarianism and Mrs Bunting’s meticulous approach to laundry.

Christmas at War by Caroline Taggart is a non-fiction counterpart to A Ration Book Christmas. It’s a collection of firsthand accounts, and excerpts from contemporary articles, journals and letters about people’s recollections of Christmas during the years of the Second World War.

The Woman with the Map by Jan Casey also transports the reader to London during the Blitz.  It’s the moving story of Joyce Cooper whose wartime role is to plot the type and location of bombs dropped on London on a map in one of the city’s Report and Control Centres.

These Days by Lucy Caldwell also depicts the impact of the WW2 bombing raids but this time on Belfast, including the four days in 1941 when nearly 100,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on the docks but also on residential areas.

My chain has been a tour of the home front, in peacetime and in wartime. Where did your chain take you?