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Hello. UK forward slash free. Hello and welcome to Table Talk, the Spectators Food and Drink podcast.

I'm Lara Prendergast and today I'm delighted to be joined by Victoria Heslop, the best-selling

author and lover of all things Mediterranean.

Victoria's first book, The Island, came out in 2005 and became an immediate international bestseller.

Her subsequent novels have explored the Spanish Civil War, Cyprus and the Greek Islands,

and she celebrated for cleverly combining history, culture, family, time and place into fascinating stories.

Her latest book, The Figaroine, is out now, and it deals with the contentious subject of acquiring cultural treasures.

Victoria, welcome to Table Talk.

Well, thank you for having me.

It would be one thing a bit more if we were sitting having a meal, but... for having me. It would be one thing about more if we were sitting having

a meal, but... Yes, no, that would be, perhaps in Greece, which I'm sure we'll get on to at some point.

As listeners of this podcast, we always start at the same place, which is a question of what were your,

or are, other, your earliest memories of food?

In one word, it's mince because that was a staple part of our diet. I was born in 1959,

so my early childhood and school days were in the 60s and food was unbelievably plain when I look back on it.

I mean, we didn't think of it as being plain.

We didn't know any different, but, you know, Elizabeth David hadn't arrived on my mother's bookshelf

...