Well, like almost anything, if you study The Flavour Thesaurus, by Niki Segnit, which uses the model of a colour wheel to suggest complementary combinations of foods and flavours which are apparently bizarre, but allegedly work! Definitely one to reach for when you've got a fridge full of oddments, none of which seem to be anything you'd want to put together.
But in the meantime - What more can we tell you about Wolf Hall?– it really is as good as people say! If you’re now gripped by the Tudors, we've put it on the stand next to Dissolution from C J Sansom’s ‘Shardlake’ series.
And what is it about Scandinavian crime writers? If (like me) you stayed up all night with Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, and want more, try Jo Nesbo (or Henning Mankell. Or Hakan Nesser.....)
Georgette Heyer never really went away, but you might have forgotten how very good she is.There’s nothing ‘romantic’ about Georgette Heyer, at least not in the usual sense. She’s not sloppy, sugary or sentimental, just wry, dry, witty and impeccably researched. As Jane Austen wrote so few novels, it’s good to have GH to fall back on.
We've put a new paperback edition of David Boyd Haycock's A Crisis of Brilliance next to Life Class by Pat Barker.Both books are about artists before, during,and after the Great War and their responses, personally and artistically, to the conflict.
You could also think about The Help (Kathryn Stockett) with The Negroes (Lawrence Hill), novels looking at different periods in America's history of race relations.
Or you could read Le Morte D'Arthur in conjunction with Christina Hardyment's biography of Malory, (or Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian trilogy), or 'compare and contrast' Roberts Graves and Harris and their fictionalisation of Ancient Rome . Douglas Jackson's Claudius is now out in paperback.Or read Suetonius's Twelve Caesars for the near-contemporary view.
We're sure you can think of more....
