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Divertimenti fan: Freya North | One of the central characters in Love Rules by Freya North, Saul Mundy, learns to cook on a Divertimenti course. “I first came across Divertimenti when I treated myself to a beautiful cup and saucer. I was still living with my parents then and they were my first pieces of crockery,” recalls Freya.
“I like the fact Divertimenti is more than just a cookery shop. It has everything for people who love food. It’s so browsable and when you’ve finished browsing you can sit down and have a cappuccino.”
Freya smiles when asked about her earliest food memory. “I don’t know if it’s a memory, but there’s a photograph of me trying ice cream for the first time with a look of total shock on my face and wearing a broderie anglaise dress.”
Ice cream features in Freya’s latest novel, Pillow Talk, in which the characters often enjoy a Suggitt’s ice-cream. “Suggitt’s is a traditional ice-cream shop in North Yorkshire,” explains Freya. “I even had an email from a woman who was on holiday in Greece and was craving a Suggitt’s ice-cream!”
Food frequently plays a significant part in Freya’s tales. “In all my books, food is important. In my first novel, Sally seduces her hero by cooking him a huge meal. At the time, I was working part-time in a coffee shop and asked one of the Italian owners what he would cook to seduce a woman and I wrote it all down. Another of my characters, Uncle Django, is quite eccentric and cooks the strangest dishes – I had great fun thinking up the extraordinary combinations.”
Freya’s own cooking style has changed since having her two children. “I’m much more aware of buying quality ingredients and buy from my local farmers’ market. I am trying to instil a love of food in my children, so they each have a bag to choose their own vegetables at the farmers’ market. It’s really difficult at Christmas because Felix will have a bag of six sprouts and Georgia will have a bag of six sprouts. To me they might look the same, but Felix and Georgia know which sprouts are theirs.”
Pillow Talk is Freya’s ninth novel. “The books have evolved with me,” Freya says. “As I’ve got older and slightly less carefree so the last three in particular have darker themes without compromising the feistiness of the characters. I feel more equipped to deal with the research too. You can’t cheat your readers – if you write about something or somewhere, you need to really know about it.”
Pillow Talk by Freya North is published by Harper Collins, price £11.99 |
