My name is Lizzie Wingfield, and I am a writer, a singer, and a cook

Food

Food and music arrived early in my life – I sang before I could talk, and fell in love with cake shortly after. I don’t remember the exact moment, but I can’t remember a time in my childhood when teatime wasn’t the highlight of my day. Other than cake, we mostly lived on Heinz Baked Beans, Heinz Spaghetti, or if we were very lucky, Heinz-Baked-Beans-with-Sausages, which I thought was the best thing ever.

But then when I was eight, we went to Brittany for a holiday. On the first day I encountered globe artichokes and langoustine; the following day I was introduced to croissants and crepes. I couldn’t believe such delicious things existed, and I wanted to spend as much of my life as possible eating them. And I have, which has made me very happy – but also very fat, and I’ve struggled with that for most of my life.

So when putting my socks on in the morning became the major challenge of the day – and news items about fat people dying of nasty diseases were talking about me – the prospect of more of my life being wasted on yet another diet filled me with despair. Until I realised that I could make the food I needed to eat to lose weight as delicious as all the things that had made me fat.

And that made me very cheerful.

I was always going to be a singer, but cooking and food came a close second. I trained and worked as a cook to support my early years as a singer, and have merrily made up recipes and plied my friends with food ever since.

I divide my time between a falling down building in London and a dilapidated farmhouse in Tuscany. I am hoping that all the weight loss and healthy eating won’t mean that they fall apart before I do.

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I have nothing against either crisps or nuts, but they are an excellent way of eating your body weight in calories before you have even sat down to dinner.

Singing

Although I have spent much of my life singing – having a wonderful time performing glorious music all over Britain, and quite a few corners of Europe – there was a point when I had to admit that I was not going to be the next Maria Callas. I didn’t stop singing, but I trained as a psychotherapist and started working with singers and musicians on all the psychological aspects of being a performer – at the Royal Opera House with the young artists program, as well as many other training institutes in Britain and Europe.

Writing

Writing took over my life gradually, but it gathered pace when my mother died. It didn’t bring out the best in my family, and while the rest of them turned to lawyers, I turned it into a funny story. And that led to writing a lot more short stories (an embarrassing number about food), children’s stories (for my daughter), political satire (politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have been very obliging), a novel and two halves (House of Stairs; The Tobacco Field; The Life and Times of Drusilla Bunn), countless recipes, and latterly articles for The Independent, Prospect, and Reaction on obesity and the … joys of travelling across Europe in an electric car.

The Diva showed up one day when I was writing a Christmas round-robin; she considered I was making a very dull job of it, and took over – and she’s shared my laptop every since. Although the word ‘share’ implies something rather more democratic than is the case.

My name is Lizzie Wingfield, and I am a writer, a singer, and a cook

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