John Baxter's The Perfect Meal is part grand tour of France, part history of French cuisine, taking readers on a journey to discover and savor some of the world's great cultural achievements before they disappear completely. Some of the most revered and complex elements of French cuisine are in danger of disappearing as old ways of agriculture, butchering, and cooking fade and are forgotten. In this charming culinary travel memoir, John Baxter follows up his bestselling The Most Beautiful Walk in the World by taking his readers on the hunt for some of the most delicious and bizarre endangered foods of France. The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of France is the perfect read for foodies and Francophiles, cooks and gastronomists, and fans of food culture.

Originally published: London: Doubleday, 2002.

A witty cultural and culinary education, Immoveable Feast is the charming, funny, and improbable tale of how a man who was raised on white bread—and didn't speak a word of French—unexpectedly ended up with the sacred duty of preparing the annual Christmas dinner for a venerable Parisian family. Ernest Hemingway called Paris "a moveable feast"—a city ready to embrace you at any time in life. For Los Angeles–based film critic John Baxter, that moment came when he fell in love with a French woman and impulsively moved to Paris to marry her. As a test of his love, his skeptical in-laws charged him with cooking the next Christmas banquet—for eighteen people in their ancestral country home. Baxter's memoir of his yearlong quest takes readers along his misadventures and delicious triumphs as he visits the farthest corners of France in search of the country's best recipes and ingredients. Irresistible and fascinating, Immoveable Feast is a warmhearted tale of good food, romance, family, and the Christmas spirit, Parisian style.

The story begins in the projects of the South Bronx, New York. There we will meet Sarah Williams, a single mother of twin girls Michelle and Miranda and son Jason. The Williams' family struggles to break the cycle of poverty in the face of gangs, drugs, and prostitution. Jason, the youngest attemtps to assert his role as "man of the house," but is overwhelmed by the task at hand. Thinking that he is just one more mouth to feed, he leaves in the middle of the night and begins his life on the streets of New York city. We follow Jason as he negotiates his new world. With the thought the he will some day be reunited with his family he makes clandestine visits to the project to see if Sarah and his sisters are still surviving. On one such visit he discovers that they have been driven from the apartment and their whereabouts are unknown. Desperate, alone, and hopeless, Jason decides to end his life in the cathedral for the homeless, Grand Central Station. Under a stairwell, hidden by the shadows, Jason lies dying as the blood drains from his body. He is alone in a horde of thousand of commuters. Rescued by his former basketball coach, his journey begins.

'Will has finally written his masterpiece. I'm glad I could be of assistance' LAWRENCE 'Essential reading' JARVIS COCKER '****' MOJO 'One of the best music books I've ever clapped eyes on' MARC RILEY '10/10 - An extraordinarily empathetic study' UNCUT 'Magnificent' SPECTATOR Guardian Book of the Day A Foyles Top Ten Read for September Lawrence is the greatest pop star who never made it, his dreams of glory thwarted over the past five decades by bad luck and self-sabotage. At sixty-one, he set off on a new mission: to escape poverty, obscurity and the humiliation of kids at the bus stop laughing at him by writing a smash hit. But what is the cost of a dream? In 1980, Lawrence formed Felt, who released ten albums and ten singles in ten years before splitting up. In 1991, he reinvented himself with novelty-pop outfit Denim. Signed to EMI, riding the wave of Britpop, in 1997, Denim's song 'Summer Smash' became Radio 1's Single of the Week and looked like a sure-fire hit. Then Princess Diana was killed in a car crash. All copies were melted down. Crushing depression, addiction and homelessness followed... but in the face of it all, Lawrence never gave up. In Street-Level Superstar, bestselling author and journalist Will Hodgkinson follows Lawrence as he rebuilds his life. He gets mistaken for an old lady by an amorous pensioner, is reduced to dragging sacks of 2p coins to his local bank and wanders through London's distant suburbs in search of lyrical inspiration. As they walk together down rain-soaked streets, Will tells the story of Britain's most eccentric cult star. Will he write the greatest song the world has ever known before the year is out? And was it worth sacrificing everything - family, relationships, health, sanity - for art?