Teenage rebellions come in different shapes and sizes. Mine was to use my fifteenth birthday money to buy Peggy Hutchinson’s ‘Old English Cookery’. My mother was baffled and - yes - not a little  pained. The fascination with cookery wasn’t the surprise. Good lord, no: my mother was an excellent cook. She adored Elizabeth David and was just a little bit proud of the fact that it was she who had brought the cheese and wine party to Lincolnshire in the 1960s (“What would you like to drink, Colin?