Children aren't being taught to cook or encouraged to try things or told why food is important.

I went to the Sorbonne in Paris for two years and read all the classics by authors like Victor Hugo and Guy de Maupassant. I was supposed to read them in French but I cheated and used the English versions instead.

Modern cookbooks are marketing tools for chefs. They're in the bestseller lists but no one cooks from them.

I've never been much of a cake-maker.

The most followed chef is Delia Smith. She is my age and doesn't try to be entertaining, she encourages people to learn the basics.

I believe passionately that the notion of having to work at a marriage is baloney. Making sacrifices and being a martyr makes one hell of a bad marriage.

The obesity problem among children is very serious. When advertising budgets are big and business can corrupt the way we live so that it becomes the norm to snack all day - and if you are never hungry you are never going to feel like eating a healthy meal - that can't be right.

I'm not clever. But I am level-headed, hard-working, dogged.

I am very in favour of children having a nap after lunch because then they're not whiney and grizzly by six o'clock.

At barbecues, people just like to eat a lot of meat; it's extraordinary. They eat far more than they normally would at a dinner party.

All I need for a perfect holiday is sun and some peace and quiet. Those make for perfect book-writing conditions.

With great difficulty, I persuaded my dentist to saw one of my teeth level with the others. He thought it might kill the tooth, but it didn't. I wanted it done because I was doing a lot of television with food and I saw myself eating with these horrible crooked teeth.

Any woman will tell you after the menopause, nobody whistle at her, well - that's just the beginning. As you get older people don't want you at their parties, we all are prejudiced about old people.

My worst habit is opening the fridge and thinking: 'I'd like to eat something.'

What I want to do is produce really delicious food. I want it to look nice, because when you see food you should want to eat it. You shouldn't be saying, 'Oh my goodness, isn't the chef clever, he can weave the Eiffel Tower out of carrot sticks.'

I opened Leith's in Notting Hill in 1969 and it eventually worked its way into being awarded a Michelin star. At the time, there were a few women running small bistros - but I was the first woman to have a 'serious,' expensive restaurant.

I was elated when I found out my first novel, 'Leaving Patrick,' about a woman who walks out on her husband, was going to be published.

After opening my first restaurant in 1969, one of the regular customers suggested I write a cookbook, so I did. Then another. After my 12th one, I started to feel stale.

It takes several doses of any veg before children like it, but once they do they'll like it for life. You wouldn't give up on a child who didn't want to learn to read. Learning to eat is every bit as important.

The way to get to like good food is by learning to cook, which is why I'm for ever banging on about children learning to cook.

I have never managed to put my feet up, ever.

I think that allowing the nation to become so ignorant about food has been such a backward step - and to be honest I don't think there should be a School Food Trust. It shouldn't be necessary.

I fall for all those lists of 100 books you must read, and go out and buy most of them.

With contemporary writers, I often buy books and then realise I've bought them before.