Caroline Conran News Today

HELLO! exclusive: See inside Salthrop House, the history Georgian home once owned by the Duke of Wellington and home to the Conran lifestyle dynasty – Sophie Conran, her mother Caroline and her daughter Coco – relatives of Habitat design guru Sir Terence Conran.

The recent episode of Radio 4’s obituaries programme, Last Words, included a tribute to Susan Campbell, the artist, illustrator, author and authority on kitchen gardens, who has died aged 92.

Susan Campbell, who has died aged 92, was in a long and varied career an artist and illustrator, a food writer and Britain’s leading expert on walled kitchen gardens, 700 of which she visited in the UK and abroad.

Home of the week: Weston Mill in Berkshire has two acres of gardens and is surrounded by a ‘gin clear’ stream. On sale for £1.95m

Designer Sophie Conran has mastered the art of outdoor entertaining – here are her top seasonal tips

A great quick supper, this is based on a recipe in Caroline Conran’s
 ‘Sud de France:

Franco Esposito makes charcuterie from the Kamberg. Prosciutto. Pancetta. Culatello. Cotechino. Being a farmer-charcutier is the same as being a photographer, what he did before, takes passion, creativity, commitment, time. Then there is that secret sauce.

Oil or butter? Or both – or neither? Salt, or not? How about liquids – how do you get the meat of a pork joint succulent and cooked through yet also end up with perfectly crisp rind, that wondrous thing that every pork lover craves: the perfect pork crackling? Caroline Conran, and it’s wise to consult very English cooks on this subject, urges us, when roasting a loin of pork, to rub the crackling with a little butter (“don’t sprinkle it with salt, as this will toughen the crackling”...

I t is 1972.  I am 27. My friend Dusty Wesker, wife of Arnold Wesker who is great mate of my then husband Tom, thrusts an Evening Standard at me announcing a competition they are running whereby the prize is to be the paper’s restaurant critic. With one or maybe even both of my two small daughters – the younger only a few months old – in my arms or round my feet I am thinking I probably shouldn’t be considering a job, but grievously I miss working, having been a copywriter at JWT and a...