24 MARCH 1961, Page 42

'Cooking a decent meal in a bedsitter is not just

a matter of finding something that can be cooked over a single gas ring. It is a problem of finding somewhere to put down the fork while you take the lid oil the saucepan, and then finding some- where else to put the lid . . . it is having your hands covered with flour, and a pot boiling over on to your landlady's carpet, and no water to mop up any of it nearer than the bathroom at the other end of the landing. It is cooking at floor level, in a hurry, with nowhere to put the salad but the washing-up bowl, which in any case is full of socks.'

So begins KITCHEN IN THE CORNER published this week, and regular readers of `Roundabout' will not need to be told that the author is Katharine Whitehorn Kitchen in the Corner is a bed-sitter- occupier's vade mecum—a gas-ring cook's tour. It is written out of long experience, and designed for the inexperienced, though the expert can learn from it, too. It is pub- lished by MacGibbon and Kee at 18s.