Clarissa Dickson Wright

Clarissa Dickson Wright found worldwide fame alongside Jennifer Paterson as one half of the much-loved television cooking partnership, Two Fat Ladies, and metropolitan fame as the manager of Notting Hill’s Books For Cooks. Her subsequent BBC2 series Clarissa and the Countryman, with co-presenter Johnny Scott, was another stellar partnership and established Clarissa as a passionate champion of rural and country issues and pursuits.  From 1998 to 2004, Clarissa served two terms as the first female Rector of Aberdeen University.

In her long-awaited and honest autobiography, Clarissa shared with readers her life, from a childhood of wealth and privilege to alcoholism, bankruptcy and subsequent success as a television presenter and food historian: SPILLING THE BEANS was published to terrific publicity by Hodder & Stoughton in 2007 and went straight to number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list. The book’s success led to Clarissa winning the 2008 BA/Nielsen BookData Author of the Year Award. CLARISSA'S COMFORT FOOD (Kyle Cathie) was published in 2008 and a year in her non-PC life, RIFLING THROUGH MY DRAWERS, was published by Hodder in 2009, followed by POTTY, a one-pot cookbook, in 2010.

In a ‘delicious contribution to BBC Four's 2008 Medieval strand’, Clarissa and the King’s Cookbook saw her track down Britain's oldest known cookbook, The Forme of Cury, at the British Libary. Her credentials as a food historian will be realised to the full in THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH FOOD, a major work commissioned by Random House Books for publication in 2011.

Clarissa Dickson Wright lives in Scotland.