Delia Smith: 'The world is in chaos… but together we have such power' ". TheGuardian.com. 6 March 2022. In its exuberance and sincerity, You Matter is emphatically the work of an autodidact, and perhaps this is one way in which it connects, as unlikely as this sounds, to the rest of her career. She left her school in Bexleyheath at 16, and went to work first as a hairdresser. But having grown interested in cooking, at 21 she started again, this time as a dishwasher in a small restaurant in Paddington, a role that gave her the opportunity to learn on the job (eventually, she graduated to waitressing, and thence to the kitchen). Meanwhile, she spent her free time devouring cookbooks in the reading room at the British Museum, trying out the recipes she found on the family from whom she rented a room. In 1969, she was taken on by the Daily Mirror’s magazine, which is where she met Michael; the first thing she wrote was a recipe for kipper paté. From there, she moved to the Evening Standard and into television (her first appearances were on the BBC’s Look East). Again, she learned as she went along. “That was the best job,” she says, of the Standard. “I used to get a lot of letters, and I learned how to write recipes from those. Someone once asked: ‘You say the tomatoes must be peeled, but how?’ From that moment, I never wrote a recipe without explaining every part of the process.”

Delia received the Guild of Food Writers prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at its 25th Awards Ceremony in June 2023. The award was given in recognition of her imagination and creativity, her dedication to good, honest food and her uncomprimising attention to detail. At 21, she started work in a small restaurant in Paddington, initially washing dishes before moving on to waitressing and eventually being allowed to help with the cooking. She started reading English cookery books in the Reading Room at the British Museum, trying out the recipes on a Harley Street family with whom she was living. In 2012, Smith criticised atheism, stating that "militant neo-atheists and devout secularists are busting a gut to drive us [religious people] off the radar and try to convince us that we hardly exist." [23] Publications Cookery books DELIA’S HOW TO CHEAT AT COOKING was published in Spring 2008 by Ebury Press and became the fastest selling title in Random House’s history. Six related programmes appeared on BBC2.The end result was a bit of a mixed bag…but I probably could have guessed that might be the case. With the ten recipes tried, only two have the potential for me to keep or make again. It's worth noting: "How to Cook" is not a recipe book, it is a *cookbook*. While "How to Cook" contains many wonderful recipes, the central premise of this book is the craft of cooking. To that end, most of the text is about ingredients and techniques; what to do, when, why, and how. As such, it is absolutely indispensible. Smith became a recognisable figure amongst young people in the 1970s and early 1980s when she was an occasional guest on the BBC's Saturday morning children's programme Multicoloured Swap Shop, giving basic cooking demonstrations.

Wallop, Harry (3 March 2010). "Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal to star in Waitrose ads". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 7 March 2010. In 2012 Smith was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of the last six decades. [21]

Bakeware and equipment

Lezard, Nicholas (11 December 1999). "Profile Delia Smith: Simmer gently, do not boil". The Independent . Retrieved 13 November 2016. DELIA’S KITCHEN GARDEN, written with Gay Search, was published in the Autumn of 2004. Inspired by her new kitchen garden at home in Suffolk, Delia wanted to create a book that told people, not only how to grow their own fruit and vegetables month by month, but also how to incorporate them into seasonal recipes. In 2017 Delia received a CH in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, joining the other 64 Companions of Honour. This followed her CBE in 2009 and her OBE in 1995.

In August 2011, Smith announced that, anticipating her 70th birthday, she was stepping down from her catering role at Norwich City's Carrow Road football ground: "It is now time for a fresh approach and a younger team who, I am confident, will take the business even further." [19] Honours and awards In 1996 Delia was awarded an Honorary degree by Nottingham University, a Fellowship from St Mary’s College (a college of the University of Surrey). The same year she entered the Royal Television Society Hall of Fame. In 1999 she received an Honorary degree from the University of East Anglia and in 2000, a Fellowship from John Moores University in Liverpool. In 2013 Delia was presented with a BAFTA Special Award in honour of her outstanding contribution to television cookery and services to broadcasting. What has the response to the book been like so far? Michael scrutinised each section as she completed it. “He would say: ‘OK’. Or: ‘I don’t think you’ve got that quite right.’” But You Matter was turned down by no fewer than six publishers, in spite of the fact that Delia has sold more than 21m copies of her cookbooks. “It was tough. At one point we were looking at self-publishing.” Finally, it went to a small press: Mensch. “And thank God those six did turn it down. I couldn’t have done better.” I’ve no idea how her latest editor feels about self-actualisation. But he or she will surely have relished the glimpses its author gives of herself on the path to enlightenment. How surprising (and cheering) to find that she loves Pharrell Williams; that she marched against Brexit; that she idolises Greta Thunberg; that it is her great pleasure to take the Norwich apprentices to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia to look at paintings by Bacon and Picasso. (“In the cafeteria, these guys of 16 were collecting up the cups; they’ve been trained to think of others because you can’t become a team if you’re only interested in yourself,” she says, when I bring this up.)In 1996, Smith was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Nottingham, a fellowship from St Mary's University College (a college of the University of Surrey) and a Fellowship from the Royal Television Society. In 1999 she received an honorary degree from the University of East Anglia and in 2000, a fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University. Delia fulfilled a long-term dream in March 2001 to be directly in touch with her readers when Delia Online was launched. An archive of over 1400 recipes, Cookery School videos, how to guides, bakeware and equipment, ingredient information, a Q & A column and regular features on what is in season and where to find the very best products. Delia offers an evolving online archive of over 45 years’ work.

Smith was baptised in the Church of England, and attended a Methodist Sunday School, a Congregationalist Brownie group and later a Church of England youth group. At the age of twenty-two, she converted to Catholicism. Her first two short religious books, A Feast for Lent (1983) and A Feast for Advent (1983), are readings and reflections for these seasons. In 1988, she wrote a longer book on prayer, A Journey into God. In March 2010, Smith and Heston Blumenthal were signed up to appear in a series of 40 commercials on British television for the supermarket chain Waitrose. [12]Usborne, Simon (5 February 2013). "Delia Smith goes digital – but who else is on the menu?". The Independent. From 1993-1998 she worked as a behind-the-scenes consultant for Sainsbury's. In May 1993 she and her husband, Michael Wynn Jones, launched New Crane Publishing, which produced the Sainsbury's Magazine. Delia was Consultant Director and contributed her own recipes. Sainsbury's Magazine had an official readership of 3.4 million. In 2005 Delia and Michael sold New Crane Publishing. In 1969 Smith was taken on as the cookery writer for the Daily Mirror's newly launched magazine. Their deputy editor was Michael Wynn-Jones, whom she later married. Her first piece featured kipper pâté, beef in beer and cheesecake. She baked the cake that was used on the cover of The Rolling Stones' album Let It Bleed. [9] In 1972 Smith started a column in the Evening Standard. She later defected to the rival Evening News, but she returned to the Standard when that newspaper bought out the News. She wrote for both for 12 years; later she wrote a column for the Radio Times until 1986. She left school at 16 without a single O-level. She first tried her hand at hairdressing, being a shop assistant and working in a travel agency. At 21, determined to learn how to cook - perhaps partly to impress her new boyfriend - she started work in a tiny restaurant in Paddington called The Singing Chef. Her first job was washing up, then waitressing and finally being allowed to help with the cooking. She began to wonder why, if French food was so good, English food was so awful. So she started reading English cookery books in the Reading Room at the British Museum, trying out the recipes on a Harley Street family with whom she was living at the time. In 1985 Delia wrote a book which her readers had been requesting for some time - a collection of recipes for the single person entitled ONE IS FUN! This became a BBC Pebble Mill television series, repeated six years later in 1991, and the book has sold over 650,000 copies. It has been translated into German, Swedish and Italian.