Editor's Note - As part of the city-wide food celebration Bristol Food Connections, which runs from 1 to 11 May, the BBC will host BBC at Bristol Food Connections.
Very excited about the line up at Bristol’s Food Connections festival. Hundreds of things to see and do (and eat). We’ve been thinking hard about the literary end of the food festival – planning events where words and food collide and where it really is ok to speak with your mouthful. And so…
Opening the festival on May 2nd is a special edition of Poetry Please raiding the larder of language for its most delicious descriptions of food. Reading the poems will be, among others, Pippa Haywood and James Fleet (who, for me, will always be Tom from Four Weddings and A Funeral no matter what else he does).
On Sunday May 4th we’ve got Beer Writer Pete Brown joining Harriett Gilbert on A Good Read. He’s promised to bring Brillat Savirin’s magnum opus the Physiology of Taste. No I hadn’t heard of it either but it’s probably shaped your sense of eating without you even knowing. And after that we’ve got top Writers Helen Dunmore, Helen Cross and Edson Burton reading short stories on the subject of food chains – be they emotional, industrial or psychological.
Oliver Twist
Michael Rosen and the Word of Mouth team are putting together a whirlwind tour through food in our great novels. If you ever wanted to know what Oliver Twist wanted more of and what really was the food of love in Shakespearean times then come join us for ‘Reader, I Marinated Him… (with apologies to Charlotte Bronte)
Countryfile Presenter John Craven will choose Isambard Kingdom Brunel as his Great Life with Matthew Parris.
John Craven
Where better to discuss the engineer than in a big tent on the waterfront at Bristol – a place shaped by Brunel and still in the shadow of his magnificent steam ship the SS Great Britain. And for dessert, Neil Stuke, who plays Billy Lamb, the senior clerk at Chambers in BBC One’s Silk, chooses his favourite and funniest pieces of writing about food, helped out by two actors. Neil’s a keen cook, who was runner-up in Celebrity MasterChef. His father was a chef, and Neil himself is so passionate about food he bought and runs his own farm shop.
James Cook is the Editor of the Poetry and Arts Unit for BBC Radio in Bristol.
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Sheila Dillon presents this year's BBC Food & Farming Awards, in a special programme on Monday 5th May, revealing the "best of the best" in British food and drink.
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