Gulf Weekly Book Club

BOOK OF THE WEEK with Linda Jennings. Everyday Super Food, Jamie Oliver, Isbn 9780718181239 (Michael Joseph) BD14.500 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members

Jamie Oliver started cooking at his parents’ pub, The Cricketers, in Clavering, Essex, at the age of eight. After leaving school he began a career as a chef that took him to the River Café, where he was famously spotted by a television production company.

His TV and publishing career began in 1999 with The Naked Chef series. Since then he has set up 15 restaurants in London, changed school dinners in the UK and revolutionised home cooking. His charity, The Jamie Oliver Foundation, seeks to improve people’s lives through food.

He writes for publications in the UK and around the world, including his own Jamie magazine and has written several best-selling cook books; this being his latest and based on using super foods and providing a balanced diet.

Packed with beautiful pictures and excellent advice on how to eat our favourite dishes in a healthier way (i.e. skinny carbonara with the cream substituted by yoghurt), this book is bound to be another ‘must have’ for all those Jamie fans in kitchens all over the world.

Read it now in paperback
Mightier Than The Sword, Jeffry Archer, ISBN 9780330517966 (Picador)
BD4.500 (for Gulf Weekly Book Club members)

Mightier Than The Sword opens with an IRA bomb exploding during the MV Buckingham’s maiden voyage across the Atlantic – but how many passengers lose their lives?

When Harry Clifton visits his publisher in New York, he learns that he has been elected as the new president of English PEN, and immediately launches a campaign for the release of a fellow author, Anatoly Babakov, who’s imprisoned in Siberia.

Babakov’s crime? Writing a book called Uncle Joe, a devastating insight into what it was like to work for Stalin.

So determined is Harry to see Babakov released and the book published, that he puts his own life in danger.

His wife Emma, chairman of Barrington Shipping, is facing the repercussions of the IRA attack on the Buckingham. Some board members feel she should resign, and Lady Virginia Fenwick will stop at nothing to cause Emma’s downfall.

Sir Giles Barrington is now a minister of the Crown, and looks set for even higher office, until an official trip to Berlin does not end as a diplomatic success. Once again, Giles’s political career is thrown off balance by none other than his old adversary, Major Alex Fisher, who once again stands against him at the election. But who wins this time?

In London, Harry and Emma’s son, Sebastian, is quickly making a name for himself at Farthing’s Bank in London, and has proposed to the beautiful young American, Samantha. But the despicable Adrian Sloane, a man interested only in his own advancement and the ruin of Sebastian, will stop at nothing to remove his rival.

Jeffrey Archer’s compelling Clifton Chronicles continue in this, his most accomplished novel to date. With all the trademark twists and turns that have made him one of the world’s most popular authors, the spellbinding story of the Clifton and the Barrington families continues.

My favourite read of the week
The Cardboard Box Book, Roger Priddy, Isbn 9781783410514 (Priddy Books)
BD5 (for Gulf Weekly Book Club members)

I absolutely love everything about this book and only wish it had been around when I spent many happy hours making castles, trains and cars out of cardboard boxes for my two sons when they were young.

It would all have looked so much more professional if I had had this incredibly imaginative step-by-step craft book to hand at the time.

The Cardboard Box Book shows children (and parents) how to transform all kinds of cardboard boxes into a puppet theatre, fairy wings, a plane, a city, a castle and much more.

Friendly guide Boxy appears on page one and is on hand throughout the book inviting children to join in the adventure of learning how to recycle cardboard to make some cool, fun and incredible things to play with which all begin with just one box.

Packed with help, advice, tips and tricks, the book includes 10 templates to help make and decorate projects so there really is no excuse – put those iPads away and get playing with a brilliant cardboard box!