Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray

2017 | Biography | Food & Drink

Patience Gray, author of cult autobiographical cookery book Honey from a Weed (and for many years a resident of Hampstead) wrote about foraging and eating locally long before it became part of the cultural mainstream. Here we have her remarkable life story: from her privileged and intellectual upbringing, to her trials as a single mother during World War II, to her career working as a designer, editor, translator and author, and her travels and culinary adventures in later years.

‘A revelatory book about an extraordinary woman, writer, and cook. Patience Gray’s rackety life seems to conform perfectly with her visionary and revolutionary views about food, cooking, and eating. She should become a totemic culinary figure for our times.’
William Boyd, author of Sweet Caress and Any Human Heart

'A touching biography of not just a remarkable woman but a way of eating, seeing, and living.’ Jacob Kenedy, chef-owner, Bocca di Lupo

Adam Federman is a reporting fellow with the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, covering energy and the environment. He has written for the Nation magazine, the Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review, Gastronomica, Petits Propos Culinaires, and other publications. He has been a Russia Fulbright fellow, a Middlebury fellow in environmental journalism, and the recipient of a Polk grant for investigative reporting. A former line cook, bread baker, and pastry chef, he lives in Vermont.

Adam Federman (Author)