Family Life – Birth, Death and the Whole Damn Thing - By Elisabeth Luard

A life through food

A recent cookbook launch at Toppings Book Shop, the unveiling of Caroline Eden’s third book in her Colour Trilogy, Green Mountains, prompted me to ponder a familiar question: if stranded on a desert island with just one cookbook, which would it be?

The answer came without hesitation: Family Life – Birth, Death and the Whole Damn Thing by Elisabeth Luard. First published in 1996, this remarkable book remains as compelling today as it was nearly three decades ago – a book I've gifted to countless fellow food lovers (and non-food lovers) over the years.

More Than Just Recipes

Luard possesses that rare gift of weaving heartfelt storytelling with sketches and recipes, creating something far richer than a conventional cookbook. Her narrative begins in 1963 when, at twenty-one, she married Nicholas Luard, co-founder of Private Eye. Within six years, she had four children and had relocated to a remote valley in Southern Spain – a move that would shape both her cooking and her writing.

Family Life chronicles the love that binds a family together, told in both sunlight and shadow. No family is immune to tragedy, still less one that lives life to the full. Luard confronts tragedy head-on, particularly through the story of her eldest daughter Francesca, who tells her own story until the moment she can no longer do so.

What emerges is ultimately a mother's tale, one of love without regret. It's a story of laughter and tears, of abundance and loss, of the daily rituals that sustain us through life's inevitable storms. The recipes aren't mere instructions but anchors to memory, place, and the people we love.

The Art of Culinary Storytelling

Luard represents the finest tradition of food writers who understand that the best cookbooks are about far more than technique. They're about the stories that make us human, the connections that food creates, and the way a single dish can transport us across time and geography.

This tradition continues today with writers like Caroline Eden, whose travel-focused cookbooks blend adventure with appetite, and Scotland's own Ghillie Basan – an unsung hero of the culinary world whose prolific work as writer, cook, presenter, and storyteller has played a key role in shaping Scotland's food and tourism landscape.

Like Luard, Basan understands that recipes without stories are merely instructions; with them, they become invitations to explore, to connect, to remember.

For those who love cookbooks that offer sustenance for both body and soul, Elisabeth Luard's Family Life remains essential reading – a book that would indeed make any desert island feel less lonely, one recipe and one story at a time.

What would your desert island cookbook be? We'd love to hear your recommendations.