Fourth Estate lines up Bee Wilson's first cookbook

Fourth Estate has commissioned the first cookbook from food writer Bee Wilson.

Louise Haines commissioned The Secrets of Cooking: Simple Ideas for Getting Back to Delicious, through Sarah Ballard at United Agents. Scheduled for spring 2022, the publisher bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, plus translation.

Wilson, author of Fourth Estate books First Bite and The Way We Eat Now, will reveal ways to “bring the spark back into everyday cooking by exploring strategies for making cooking easier and more enjoyable amid the messy imperfections and pressures of modern life”.

Haines said: “This exciting proposal promises wise and intelligent insights into how to fit in and enjoy simple home cooking. It will be crammed with wonderful advice and recipes.”

Wilson added: “After more than 20 years as a food writer, I'm so excited to be writing my first cookbook. I kept having conversations with friends about how they found it almost impossible to combine cooking with busy lives. My kitchen is crammed to the rafters with much-loved cookbooks but what I didn't have was a book that could give me some secrets for making cooking more enjoyable and more delicious even on days when there seems to be no time to do it: a kind of recipe for using recipes. I couldn't find this book anywhere, so I decided to write it.”