Hungry by Grace Dent

Angel Delight.

If any part of your childhood happened in the UK in the 1970s then you will surely remember the arrival of these packets of magic dust that transformed half a pint of milk into pudding. No saucepans or fancy kitchen implements required, just a bowl and a fork, and by the time you had it all mixed together it was already setting into a smooth and creamy mousse. This was a taste of the future!

As soon as I saw the bowl of Angel Delight on the front of Grace Dent's book I was sure I wanted to read it. I wanted to re-live the days when an Arctic Roll was something really special and tinned spaghetti on toast was considered a balanced meal. I wasn't disappointed. I got all that, but I also got a lot more that I hadn't been expecting.

Grace Dent writes with the kind of unashamed honesty that starts off as bravado and slowly, slowly morphs into what life was really like for a girl growing up on a housing estate in Carlisle. By fourteen she was a law unto herself and she and her friends had boyfriends who were scaffolders and they all smoked Regal King Size that they stole from their Nan's handbags. The school was beginning to write her off, but Grace had dreams of being a famous writer, and she was already taking steps to get her name printed in national magazines.

It started with one and a quarter letters printed in the New Musical Express, and as the years went by, she wangled her way into bigger and better jobs in publishing and television by keeping her eye on where she wanted to be and working towards it with steely determination. She is a wonderful example to anyone who has ever been told that they are not good enough, clever enough or connected enough to be what they want to be. Her journey has not always been easy, and there have been some high prices to pay for putting her career first, but she has achieved her aim and she has never been anything other than herself.

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