Roger Lewis
Nigella Lawson, whom I've never met in the picturesque flesh, is hard to dislike. She's beautiful, in an Edward Burne-Jones sort of way, and well-connected (my friend Jonathan Coe is wondering about calling his newborn baby daughter Jonathanella to see if it'll pay off). Her new book, How to be a Domestic Goddess (Chatto, £25), print- ed on paper of chocolate brown and bur- nished gold card, looks good enough to eat; and I haven't seen things like chestnut ice- cream meringue cake and muscat rice pud- ding since my old Welsh granny hung up her apron strongs. My other recommendation is febrile and delicate — the wispy pen-and-ink drawings of Edward Ardizzone, as gathered by Judy Taylor in Sketches for Friends (John Mur- ray, £10). Ardizzone used to fill his corre- spondence with delightful scribbles and watercolours. Included here are letters, travel diaries, jottings from days out to Glyndebourne or afternoons boating on the Thames. The London pubs and chop- houses, south-coast seaside resorts, railway stations and horse-drawn omnibuses: this is pictorial Betjeman. How superior Ardiz- zone was to Hugh Casson, who neverthless got to illustrate (shoddily) Summoned by Bells. Casson's biography, incidentally, by Jose Manser (Viking £25) was flatter than my attempt at Nigella's Pistachio Soufflé, which choked next-door's dog.
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