A. A. Gill

A. A. Gill's memoir begins in the dark of a dormitory with six strangers. He is an alcoholic, dying in the last-chance saloon - driven to dry out, not out of a desire to change but mainly through weariness. He tells the truth - as far as he can remember it - about drinking and about what it is like to be drunk. Pour Me is about the black-outs, the collapse, the despair: 'Pockets were a constant source of surprise - a lamb chop, a votive candle, earrings, notes written on paper and ripped from books,' and even, once, a pigeon. 'Morning pockets,' he says, 'were like tiny crime scenes.' He recalls the lost days, lost friends, failed marriages ... But there was also 'an optimum inebriation, a time when it was all golden, when the drink and the pleasure made sense and were brilliant'. Sobriety regained, there are painterly descriptions of people and places, unforgettable musings about childhood and family, art and religion, friendships and fatherhood; and, most movingly, the connections between his cooking, dyslexia and his missing brother. Full of raw and unvarnished truths, exquisitely written throughout, Pour Me is about lost time and self-discovery. Lacerating, unflinching, uplifting, it is a classic about drunken abandon.

A Life

Pour Me

A.A. Gill is probably the most read columnist in Britain. Every weekend he entertains readers of the Sunday Times with his biting observations on television and his unsparing, deeply knowledgeable restaurant reviews. Even those who want to hate him agree: A. A. Gill is hopelessly, painfully funny. He is one of a tiny band of must-read journalists and it is always a disappointment when the words 'A. A. Gill is Away' appear at the foot of his column. This second book is a further collection of those absences; 22 travel pieces and essays on other subjects that belie his reputation as a mere style journalist and master of vitriol. This is writing of the highest quality and ambition.

Assignments from Here and There

Previous Convictions

The default setting of England is anger. The English are naturally, congenitally, collectively and singularly, livid much of the time. In between the incoherent bellowing of the terraces and the pursed, rigid eye-rolling of the commuter carriage, they reach the end of their tethers and the thin end of their wedges. They're incensed, incandescent, splenetic, prickly, touchy and fractious. They can be mildly annoyed, really annoyed and, most scarily, not remotely annoyed. They sit apart on their half of a damply disappointing little island, nursing and picking at their irritations. Perhaps aware that they're living on top of a keg of fulminating fury, the English have, throughout their history, come up with hundreds of ingenious and bizarre ways to diffuse anger or transform it into something benign. Good manners and queues, roundabouts and garden sheds, and almost every game ever invented from tennis to bridge. They've built things, discovered stuff, made puddings, written hymns and novels, and for people who don't like to talk much, they have come up with the most minutely nuanced and replete language ever spoken - just so there'll be no misunderstandings. The English itch inside their own skins. They feel foreign in their own country and run naked through their own heads. They are often admirable but rarely loveable. An Englishman's greatest achievement is in resisting his national inclinations and not going crazy with an axe in a cul-de-sac. This book hunts down the causes and the results of being the Angry Island.

Hunting the English

The Angry Island

AA Gill knows food, and loves food. He's an unashamedly intolerant perfectionist whose witty observations and scathing criticism have been the highlight of reading the Sunday papers for over ten years. His fearsome knowledge, and fearless honesty, make him one of the most respected critics to walk through a restaurant's doors. A meal is never just a meal. It has a past, a history, connotations. It is a metaphor for life. AA Gill delights in decoding what lies behind the food on our plates: famously, his reviews are as much ruminations on society at large as they are about the restaurants themselves. So alongside the concepts, customers and cuisines, ten years of writing about restaurants has yielded insights on everything from yaks to cowboys, picnics to politics. Table Talk is an idiosyncratic selection of AA Gill's writing about food, taken from his Sunday Times and Tatler columns. Sometimes inspired by the traditions of a whole country, sometimes by a single ingredient, it is a celebration of what great eating can be, an excoriation of those who get it wrong, and an education about our own appetites. Because it spans a decade, the book focuses on AA Gill's general dining experiences rather than individual restaurants - food fads, tipping, chefs, ingredients, eating in town and country and abroad, and the best and worst dining experiences. Fizzing with wit, it is a treat for gourmands, gourmets and anyone who relishes good writing.

Sweet and Sour, Salt and Bitter

Table Talk

From acclaimed writer AA Gill comes this collection of travel pieces selected from his monthly column in Australian Gourmet Traveller – ‘AA Gill is away’. Witty, acerbic and often moving, these pieces are far from standard travel writing fare. Touching on tourism, airports, world cuisine and countries including Madagascar, Iceland and Albania, Gill’s perspective is often controversial and always unique. He ponders Italy’s ability to turn organised crime into a tourist attraction, stumbles upon lobster-shaped coffins in Ghana, contemplates the Darwinian drive of bastardised dishes around the globe, explains why Johannesburg is the luckiest place in the unluckiest continent and considers the great black lake of tears that immigration leaves behind. With an introduction and extra piece written exclusively for this collection, Here and There showcases the very best of Gill’s hilarious and insightful travel writing, and is a must read for anyone who is curious about the world we live in.

Here and There

hunting the English

The angry island

the best of the Sunday Times television reviews

Paper view

Sap Rising

"In TO AMERICA WITH LOVE, celebrated British provocateur and Vanity Fair columnist A. A. Gill traverses the Atlantic to become the freshest chronicler of American identity in recent memory. With a fiery temper, a sharp-tongued wit, and an insatiable curiosity to figure out what makes more than 300 million of the world's population tick, Gill traces the history and logic of our nation's habits, collecting wild stories and startling facts along the way. From Colorado, where he meets a local vegetation expert and learns which flowers were in Pocahontas's nuptial bouquet, to Kentucky, where he visits the Creationist Museum and drinks moonshine with a hog farmer, and to Harlem, where he misses a turn and stumbles into the wrong barbershop for a once-in-a-lifetime haircut, Gill embarks on a tour of not only the nation's landscape but also its psyche, playing adventurer, philosopher, statistician, and raconteur all at once. In inimitable fashion he explains why pressing a button in a Manhattan elevator means entering a social contract of American etiquette and inverting conventional hierarchies of space; why browsing through Playboy centerfolds becomes the perfect litmus test for a generation's political views; and how Hollywood is the metaphysical marketplace for movies, the place where Americans are sold on American romance and taught how to dream the American dream. Weaving together a tapestry of historical erudition and outrageous anecdotes, Gill ultimately captures the scope and spirit of a nation that started off as a conceptual experiment and became a political, scientific, and cultural fortress. This humorous and revelatory book shows us why we are who we are by transforming ordinary experiences into extraordinary lessons and promising to never let us look in the mirror the same way again"--

"Celebrated British provocateur and Vanity Fair columnist A. A. Gill traverses the Atlantic to become the freshest chronicler of American identity in recent memory. With a fiery temper, a sharp-tongued wit, and an insatiable curiosity to figure out what makes more than 300 million of the world's population tick, Gill traces the history and logic of our nation's habits, collecting wild stories and startling facts along the way. From Colorado, where he meets a local vegetation expert and learns which flowers were in Pocahontas' nuptial bouquet, to Kentucky, where he visits the Creationist Museum and drinks moonshine with a hog farmer, and to Harlem, where he misses a turn and stumbles into the wrong barber shop for a once-in-a-lifetime haircut, Gill embarks on a tour not only of the nation's landscape but also its psyche, playing adventurer, philosopher, statistician, and raconteur all at once. In inimitable fashion, he explains why pressing a button in a Manhattan elevator means entering a social contract of American etiquette and inverting conventional hierarchies of space; why browsing through Playboy centerfolds becomes the perfect litmus test for a generation's political views; and how Hollywood is the metaphysical marketplace for movies, the place where Americans are sold on American romance and taught how to dream the American dream. Weaving together a tapestry of historical erudition and outrageous anecdotes, Gill ultimately captures the scope and spirit of a nation that started off as a conceptual experiment and became a political, scientific, and cultural fortress. This humorous and revelatory book shows us why we are who we are, transforming ordinary experiences into extraordinary lessons and promising to never let us look in the mirror in the same way again"--

To America with love

A. A. Gill Is Further Away

The second collection of travel writing (and other essays) by Britain's funniest and most feared critic.

The Best of A.A. Gill

Collected Travel Writing

Think 'grand café' and the image that immediately springs to mind is a decadent, smoke-filled place populated by coffee-drinking thinkers, writers and artists in 1930s Europe. Along with the brasserie, the grand café combines an opulent setting exclusively for the everyman. Zédel is such a place. Housed in a 1915 hotel off London's Piccadilly Circus, it was restored to its former grandeur and re-opened in 2012 with all the charm and distinction of Art Deco Paris. In this book, A. A. Gill explores the origins of the grand café and pays homage to the character of Zédel. Much more than just a restaurant, Zédel houses a bustling café leading to a sweeping marble staircase, at the bottom of which are the Crazy Coqs cabaret, the Bar Américan cocktail bar, and the magnificent brasserie itself. Forty iconic brasserie recipes are included in the book, such as Soupe à l'oignon, Moules marinières, Boeuf bourgignon, Profiteroles and Tarte au citron. Period photography and artwork help to capture the mood of this remarkable and fascinating venue.

Traditions and Recipes from a Grand Brasserie

Brasserie Zédel

A A Gill is probably the most read columnist in Britain. Every weekend he entertains readers of the Sunday Times with his biting observations on television and his unsparing, deeply knowledgeable restaurant reviews. Even those who want to hate him agree: A A Gill is hopelessly, painfully funny. He is one of a tiny band of must-read journalists and it is always a disappointment when the words ¿AA Gill is Away¿ appear at the foot of his column. This book is the fruit of those absences: 22 long travel pieces that belie his reputation as a mere style journalist and master of vitriol: this is travel writing of the highest quality and ambition.

A.A. Gill is Away

A satire of manners about a garden in a West London square and the unlikely members of its garden committee.

The Ivy restaurant is known as a theatrical, literary and artistic haunt, which keeps its roots in quick and simple food, not tied to any style or regional cuisine. A.A. Gill has combined its recipes, all suitable for the home kitchen, with the history of the restaurant.

The Restaurant and Its Recipes

The Ivy

"A.A. Gill's first novel, SAP RISING, garnered a galaxy of reviews when it was published, from the enchanted Among the most original novels of the year' (Financial Times) to the hysterical Do not buy this book' (Guardian), from the delirious Extremely funny' (Time Out) to the outraged Frightful pile of garbage', to the contradictory He writes so brilliantly' (Daniel Farson, Evening Standard), Extremely badly written, hideously and unamusingly obscene' (A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard). It can reasonably be said that SAP RISING was one of the most visible books of the year. Now comes something equally striking and completely different: STARCROSSED. ike Byron, John Dart, poet and bookshop assistant, wakes up one morning and finds himself, if not quite famous, then the next best thing: in bed with someone famous. Lee Montana, singer, film star and the most famous woman in the world, wakes up one morning and finds she's had carnal knowledge of a shop assistant - which doesn't have quite the same exclamatory ring to it. Antigone doesn't wake up at all. She is a 2,000-year-old dead Greek girl with a truculent disposition and a bad dose of destiny. Tentatively, John and Lee embark o

Starcrossed

Lewis Esson

Breakfast is said to be the most important meal of the day and nowhere is that fact more appreciated than at the Wolseley restaurant in London's Piccadilly. The brainchild of Jeremy King and Chris Corbin - celebrated restaurateurs - the Wolseley is a cross between the traditional robustness of the Parisian brasserie and the gloriously grand but cosy comfort of the Viennese cafe. Breakfast is an institution at the Wolseley and whether you want a healthy breakfast of fruit, cereal and yoghurt, or a full no-fuss English, every need is catered for using the finest ingredients from the best of British and European producers. "Breakfast at the Wolseley" serves up the ultimate guide to producing and enjoying a superb breakfast in the Wolseley style. There is a host of delicious recipes. You can also learn more about the background and ethos of the Wolseley with a description of the building and how it became the icon it is today.

A. A. Gill

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