LETTER : Celebrities in the kitchen

I EXPECT others will write to tell Michael Bateman that the celebrity cookbook goes back further than he thinks ("Ingredients of fame", Review, 10 September).

My copy of Pot Luck was published in 1964 by Farringtons Girls' School in Kent in aid of the Freedom from Hunger Campaign. It was professionally produced and, if not available through bookshops, was certainly widely sold (for five shillings) in other schools, including the girls' grammar school in Sussex I was then attending. The recipes came from celebrities such as Yehudi Menuhin (Bircher-Muesli), Sir Malcolm Sargent (Haddock Monte Carlo), Hattie Jacques (Moules d'Ail) and Vanessa Redgrave (Italian Cabbage), but these were unassumingly mixed with those from parents, old girls, cookery writers and foreign embassies, and the book was organised and indexed by recipe, not celebrity.

Liz Moloney

London SW16