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“Our office lunches consisted of peanut butter and Jello sandwiches, served with slugs of vodka.” Nicky Haslam

Vickie Lester

The world was interconnected, even before the Internet. Nicky Haslam worked with Diana Vreeland (peanut butter and Jello?), who was a dear friend of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, seen here reading Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD.

Just this morning I was walking when I saw a neighbor sitting on his front step, scarf wrapped around his neck, cigarette in one hand, book in another, intently reading the same thing in the first rays of the sun.

A book is a gateway to another world. Don’t you think? So, I was fascinated when , author of READING JACKIE, put this up on his twitter feed:

 

He helped me with READING JACKIE & I like him & he’s a legend & so I’ve just supported Good Taste: A Decorator’s Cookbook by Nicky Haslam at

This book sounds fascinating, and so to does the way its coming into the world; publication by crowdfunding via the good people of Unbound. Take a look…

Lady Diana Cooper told me the two essential ingredients for a good dinner party: “Too much to drink and a chocolate pudding.”…

This book was inspired by one written by my aunt, Lady Sysonby, during the early years leading up to the Second World War. It’s the prettiest little book, illustrated by Oliver Messel, with a foreward written by no less a literary legend than Sir Osbert Sitwell. Ria Sysonby’s father, Sir Frederick Ponsonby, was Private Secretary to three monarchs. He wrote of the first, Queen Victoria: “The Queen had far too much character and individuality to have good taste.” He meant, clearly, her taste in surroundings (which we know was stultifyingly fussy) but his vignette of her “breakfast table, laid entirely with gold, the queen eating a boiled egg from a gold egg cup with a golden spoon” gives a fascinating glimpse of simplicity amid splendour.

This mix of individual taste for the mouth and the eye is what I hope the reader will find in the pages of Good Taste. Not serious “good” taste, but utterly delectable things tasting truly good — with plenty of fun along the way.

Delicious! Now click above and support Mr. Haslam.

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