Grace Dent on food, class, ambition and coping with her father’s dementia

The Sunday Salon with Alice-Azania Jarvis

We are back! Welcome to series three of the Sunday Salon - and I’m kicking the new season off with a really special guest: the one and only Grace Dent, restaurant critic, columnist, novelist, TV personality and now, memoirist. Her new book Hungry: A memoir of wanting more is undoubtedly one of my reads of the year. Taking in Grace’s childhood in Carlisle, where she dreamed of glamour and the bright lights of London, then her break into the media industry, and her raucous climb up the career ladder, it is a total riot to read - and also deeply, deeply moving, as she chronicles her father’s journey into dementia and her struggle to hold the family together without herself falling apart. It’s evocative, and clever, and made me laugh and cry several times over.

I really loved speaking to Grace about all of this - as well as the peculiarities of class in Britain, writing at 5am and why she wishes she’d spent less time worrying about men. It was a very, very special conversation. So thank you Grace - and I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did.

By the book here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/hungry/grace-dent/9780008333171

Twitter: @gracedent / @aliceazania
Instagram: @gracedent / @aliceazania

Edited by Chelsey Moore