Under a Mackerel Sky

The wry, perceptive and brilliantly evocative memoir of one of Britain's best-loved cooks.
Stein's formative years in the 50s were shaped by the Oxfordshire farm he was brought up on and his family's much loved holiday home in Cornwall. But ever-present were the black moods of his bi-polar father who saw too much of himself in the young boy. His father's suicide when Stein was 18 precipitated his escape for two years to Australia. Working in an abattoir and on the railways, he stuggled to find his place in the world.

But life began to change when, following his graduation from Oxford, he set up first a mobile disco called the Purple Tiger and then a nightclub in Padstow. Catering largely for tanked-up, aggressive fishermen, Stein had to acknowledge that the gap between his vision and reality was huge. After one fight too many, the police closed him down but a clerical error meant that their licence to serve food still stood. Success followed hopelessness, and his hugely impressive career as a restaurateur and entrepreneur was followed by those of broadcaster, food champion and writer.