The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan, bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, is a highly memorable story inspired by the original daily BBC radio show established in 1940 by the Ministry of Food during the Second World War.
Two years into the Second World War, German U-boats are disrupting Britain’s supply of food. Hoping to
help housewives create new and more interesting recipes for their food rations, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front launches a new cooking contest.
The grand prize is employment as the program’s first-ever female co-host!
Ambrose Hart, the show’s presenter, is holding the competition in the village of Fenley, where he currently resides, intending to choose the winner from local residents.
Audrey, a war widow with three young boys, hopes to win, which will give her the opportunity to clear
debts owed on her house.
Lady Gwendoline from Fenley Hall, Audrey’s alienated sister, is also set on winning, as is her talented,
but nervous, kitchen maid, Nell.
Also joining the trio is the mysterious Zelda Dupont, a cordon bleu-trained London chef, now working at
Fenley Pie Factory. Keen to succeed in a male-dominated profession, she is concealing a secret that will
impact upon them all…………….
This is a wonderfully warm and perceptive novel about the trials and tribulations faced everyday by
women during wartime. Rationing and food shortages sorely tried the ingenuity of women to provide
nourishing and edible meals for their families.
Ministry of Food recipes were often incredibly dull, although those with gardens were able to grow a
wider variety of foodstuffs to supplement their rations. The countryside also often provided wild herbs
and berries and sometimes a meaty rabbit or two! Nevertheless, women still struggled to put food on the
table.
The Kitchen Front is a tribute to the strength and determination of those women who were the unsung
heroes of WWII
A feel-good, a must-read for 2022!
ISBN: 9781529086522
The Kitchen Front is available in paperback and e-book
About Jennifer Ryan
Jennifer Ryan lives in Ireland with her husband and two children. Originally from Kent, Jennifer grew up
in the British countryside with a penchant for climbing trees. She had a wonderful grandmother, who told
her hilarious stories about the Second World War.
As an adult, she became a non-fiction book editor, first editing politics and economics at The Economist
Books, and then moving on to the BBC, DK, and other publishers, editing books on health, cooking,
wine, and history.
All this time, though, she harboured a longing to share her grandmother’s stories about the war, and so
she embarked on an MA in fiction at Johns Hopkins University. The novel that she wrote while there, The
Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, became a National Bestseller.
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