IF there is a spare a book floating around, then direct it urgently in the direction of The Penguin Book of Food and Drink, edited by Paul Levy.
Levy divides his choices between the New World and the Old World schools. He roams wide enough to include S.J. Perelman's brilliant spoof Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer and F. T. Marinetti's Manifesto for Futurist Cooking but, for the most part, the book is stuffed with the choicest morsels: M.F.K. Fisher, Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, A.J. Liebling and many other masters of the pen and the knife and fork.
It is no easy job to put together an anthology of writing about food - the last two weighty volumes I read were deadly dull - but Mr Levy's choices are classic, and irresistible.