Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall

"You can't always predict what will get a child's imagination started, but in my experience they tend to remain absorbed longer with fantasy games."

"For me, the perfect weekend is one spent with the whole family, ideally at the beachside cottage we rent in North Cornwall. I have happy memories of holidays in Cornwall when our children Sophy and were about the age our grandchildren are now. There are 11 of us: me, my husband Rob, Sophy and Hugh and their spouses, and our five grandchildren, and we do all the usual things: build s on and wait for the tide to come in and destroy them. We search for prawns, crabs and sea anemones in rock pools. We might even do some surfing. We'll go mackerel fishing in a boat, and if we catch anything (which everyone always does, that's the great thing about mackerel fishing). Then Hugh ... will whip out his little bottle of home-brewed and we'll all sit there in the middle of the ocean, tucking into fresh mackerel ."

"I have six grandchildren and when I have them with me I do love giving them treats — or a . But they are given as a surprise reward for behaving well, not in response to whingeing. One reason so many children are more overweight today could be that they lead less active lives than we did. We walked to school and spent more time playing in the fresh air. Houses were not as warm, so we used up more calories: food was fuel to keep us going. If grandparents are feeding grandchildren the same portions they ate as children, it's probably too much."

"Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall cooked and ate a root while researching her book Peonies: The Imperial Flower (1999). She described the flavour as 'reminiscent of turnips soaked in wallpaper paste mixed with '."

"... Jane, 72, who in the mid-1960s worked as the first secretary of ’s fan club, and her husband, Rob, 76, a retired advertising executive, are far from being stereotypical old buffers. In fact, they were trend-setters in their day — among the first of the “down-shifting” young professionals who had the chutzpah to get off the corporate conveyor belt, sell up in London and go in search of a better quality of life in the sticks. ‘There was a time when people said to , “you must be Jane’s son”, she says wistfully. ‘Then suddenly I was Hugh’s mother’. Their decision to swap the security of a regular salary cheque for life in the freelance lane took considerable courage in 1971, with unemployment hovering at the 7% mark. “We did it for the children, really,” Jane recalls. “Both Rob and I were brought up in the countryside, and we wanted the same for Sophy and Hugh. We were living in at the time, but this was before it became posh. It was lively and multi-ethnic, with around the corner. It was lots of fun, but it was not the best place to bring up children."