FOR NEARLY half a century Delia Smith was the nation’s cookery teacher. From a TV studio, or her own kitchen deep in the Suffolk countryside, she taught us the best way to boil an egg, make an omelette or prepare a simple dinner party.
Her TV shows and multi-million-selling books were, Delia says, “an attempt to teach a generation the basics of cooking”. And, mild-mannered, unfussy, and refreshingly ordinary, she was the antithesis of the modern-day celebrity chef, which is partly why she finally called time on television (but not cooking) nearly ten years ago.
During lockdown Delia – who turned 80 last year – spent her time working on a book about another subject that has long been close to her heart, spirituality. And this finally bore fruit with the recent publication of You Matter, a series of reflections on how you can find personal fulfilment and, by extension, help to heal a world that has, in Delia’s words, become “unhinged”.
The ever-present danger with someone like Delia publishing a book about spirituality is the Alan Partridge effect – celebrities, with a deficit of self-knowledge and a surfeit of vanity, believing their every utterance is holy writ. But Delia does not pretend to hold some hidden secret to a better life; instead she simply offers suggestions on
