Dining with the Rich and Royal

From Antony and Cleopatra to Lady Diana, from Nero to Ari Onassis, this book explores the preferred dishes of the rich and royal, allowing us a seat at the tables of the upper crust, who transform our world, for better or for worse. Offering recipes throughout, Ross provides a fun and enlightening excursion into the appetites of the elite.

Dining with the Rich and Royal is a marvelous journey into the gastronomic peccadilloes of the great, the good, and the not-so-good. When the world is at your feet, what is on your table? Dining with the Rich and Royal serves up the glamour of the jet set on a plate, from the silver spoon to the last Kleenex wipe. We follow the food adventures of Hilton, Hefner, and Howard Hughes; the great transatlantic dynasties: Onassis, the Vanderbilts, the Astors and the Rothschilds. Royals watchers and history twitchers will find out the effect of too many fairy feasts on Ludwig of Bavaria; how Hirohito and Ibn Saud tasted East-Meets-West diplomacy. Would you try the cake that killed Rasputin or suck on a suicide sweet with Antony and Cleo? Was it sex or raspberry soufflé that won Mrs. Simpson a king’s heart? It’s all here: a succession of abdications, executions, revolutions, coronations, tales of toothache and posh picnics spiced with the odd military coup or two. Mind your manners now.