After Dinner Speakers: Jaffrey Madhur, Will Mellor, Holly Johnson

As an actress, TV presenter and writer, Madhur Jaffrey has many strings to her bow, but it is for her cookery that she’s best known. Ironically, though, as a child she never went into the kitchen and when she left India, couldn’t cook a thing... Born in Delhi, Madhur Jaffrey came to the UK the age of 19 to pursue her passion for acting by studying drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. It was here that her love of cooking began, though more out of necessity than anything else. While in London she desperately missed Indian home-cooked food, so she started writing letters to her mother asking to be taught how to cook. She would be sent regular recipes and effectively learnt to cook by correspondence. After graduating from RADA she acted in productions for television, film and radio but left England and headed for New York where she began to write food articles as a way of supplementing her income and getting her children through school. Then came her hugely successful books and accompanying television programmes. With four decades of culinary experience behind her, it’s the straight-talking clarity of her language that makes her books so successful. She unravels the mysteries of Indian food and says her aim is to keep things simple and easy to follow and, as she only started to cook when she was 20, she writes from the perspective of someone who had to learn herself, aware of all the difficulties presented in the kitchen. Today Madhur continues to combine her dual careers as a successful actress and cookery writer.