Farewell to my favourite bookseller.

I saddened by the death yesterday of Clarissa Dickson-Wright. She found fame relatively late in life as a TV chef and one half of the Two Fat Ladies but she was so much more than that. Ferociously intelligent, she was, at 21, Britain’s youngest female barrister before becoming a “dedicated alcoholic”. But I fondly remember her running a bookshop called Books for Cooks just off Portobello Road. The third of my many sisters is a wonderful cook and collector of cookbooks so, on her birthday and every Christmas, I’d visit the shop and Clarissa would advise me on which book my sister might like. She was bang on every time. But what I really loved about her was her choice of this as the favourite of her Desert Island Discs. She’ll be sadly missed.