Alice Thomas Ellis
The Rituals of Dinner by Margaret Visser (Viking, £17.99) has gone straight into my (so far rather pitiful) collection of books on domestic history. I share with Jeff Bernard a fondness for cookery books and am more interested in what people ate and how they ate it (cook people with peppers and toma- toes and serve with maize, according to the Aztecs) than in their procreative practices. A. N. Wilson's The Vicar of Sorrows (Sinclair-Stevenson, £14.99) is highly enjoy- able in its portrayal of certain contemporary attitudes and anguishes. I was delighted to stumble across Someone to whom I have been married for so long and who appears here in a dear little thumbnail sketch as Harris of Balliol.
In his other incarnation Someone has re- published. The Little Princesses, the Queen's governess 'Crawfie's' account of royal folk when they still knew how to behave themselves (Duckworth, £14.99). A glori- ously nostalgic, oddly camp portrayal of a vanished world and the perfect Christmas present for almost anyone. I make no apology for this shameless plug, any more than I would for our superb cheese pudding. Le patron mange ici.
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