Dining with the Famous and Infamous

Dining with the Famous and Infamous is an entertaining journey into the gastronomic peccadilloes of celebrities, stars, and notorious public figures. From outrageous artists to masterpiece authors, from rock stars to actors – everybody eats. Based on the findings of the British gastro-detective Fiona Ross, this volume explores the palates, the plates, and the preferences of the famous and infamous. Including recipes and their stories in the lives of those who cooked, ordered or ate them, Ross invites you to taste the culinary secret lives of people like Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Sinatra, and Woody Allen, among many others. Food voyeurism has arrived.

If you’ve ever wondered whether George Orwell really swigged Victory Gin or whether cherries played their part in the fall of Oscar Wilde, then Dining with the Famous and Infamous will satisfy your appetite. 'Marilyn Monroe becomes a different kind of sex goddess when you discover she tried to eat her way out of Some Like It Hot with aubergine parmigiana: every curve you see on film is a protest (plus early signs of pregnancy!). You can recreate a ‘Get Gassed’ afternoon cocktail with Andy Warhol and Truman Capote; shake up the chocolate martini Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson invented on the set of Giant; and even relive the Swinging Sixties with the foodie tales, hedonism and hashish cookies of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones.

Who wouldn’t want to sit at the table of their favorite film star, writer, artist or warlock and taste a piece of their lives?

Fiona Ross leads a double-existence: in her ‘normal’ life as the exhausted English Teacher at an all-girls school, Fiona keeps company with screaming debutants and a lot of short people under the age of twelve, while practicing the dark arts of crowd control. Meanwhile, her double works as freelance food writer and a gastro-detective whose headquarters are the Bodleian Library; she spends her time there pondering which sandwich filling she would prefer for lunch when she is not hot on the trail of a famous gastronome.

This is a set of uncorrected page proofs. It is not a finished book and is not expected to look like one. Errors in spelling, page length, format and so forth will all be corrected by the time the book is published several months from now. Photos and diagrams, which may be included in the finished book, may not be included in this format. Uncorrected proofs are primarily useful so that you, the reader, might know months before actual publication what the author and publisher are offering. If you plan to quote the text in your review, you must check it with the publicist or against the final version. Please contact publicity@rowman.com with any questions. Thank you!