Hello and welcome to Table Talk, the Spectators' Food and Drink podcast.

I'm Olivia Potts.

And I'm Laura Prendergast.

And today we are delighted to be joined by Aidan Hartley.

Aidan is a writer and entrepreneur.

Born in Kenya, he was brought up in Africa and England,

and he joined Reuters as a foreign correspondent,

and has worked in Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and Russia.

And he's written the Spectator's Wildlife column for the last 21 years.

His next book, Paradise of Thorns, will be released next year.

Aidan, welcome to Table Talk.

Thank you very much for having me.

Aidan, as listeners know, we always start at the beginning.

What are your earliest memories of food?

My very earliest memory is Somaliland,

watching an elderly man chop their heads off chickens on a Sunday before lunch,

reciting the Quran as he did so, and watching these cockerels leaping about until they flop down

and were taken off to the kitchen to be cooked. My dad was working in Somalia and Ethiopia, and we would often spend our lives on safari.

In those days, it wasn't a trip to a wildlife park.

It was a long journey through the bush or the wilderness.

And we lived out of a tin box, and wherever we were at four o'clock in the afternoon, he would

pull off the road and brew up. And then a couple of handfuls of rice would be tossed into a

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