What is your ultimate ambition?

[John Whiting]

Shaun, thanks for running the gauntlet!

People often speak of your withdrawl to the wilds of Shropshire as though you had chosen the isolated existence of a hermit; but you must have known that, with people like Mirabel Osler and Lesley Mackley about, you would be likely to reach a quorum of like-minded diners who would see eye-to-eye with you about what constituted a good meal. Obviously you wanted to cook, not just use the restaurant as a launching pad for a media career -- otherwise you wouldn't have set up a modus operandi which locked you as inexorably into the kitchen as little Francine up in the furthest heights of the Ardeche, whom Mirabel writes about so appreciatively.

But you must have something else in mind for your reclining years. Chefs are lucky if they have the professional longevity of a prize-fighter, and you are blessed with a classical education and the ability to write as well as you cook. Someday, when you can no longer stand the heat, do you have a magnum opus in mind -- a book which will bring together your grasp of cuisine, culture and civilization?

[Shaun Hill]

It's kind of you to assume I have the talent for another career writing about food but I'm not sure that there is the demand. Most publishers are happiest with stuff that has "wow" factor rather than what I do which tends toward the painstaking in preparation followed by minimal effort in presentation.

Similarly have always disliked doing telly work - somebody exhorting you to look all orgasmic about olive oil or somesuch or parlour games involving ambitious grub., retakes because the lighting or sound wasn't quite right. all that sort of thing. Good luck to them all but it's not what I want to do. Of course there are lots of chefs bursting to appear so I'm sure there will have been few tears shed by the TV companies

In any case, I have never worked to a long term plan. I entered my career in the kitchen as a stopgap for a few months before finding a proper - a properly paid - job. Perhaps when my carcase starts to falter I'll have to return to this plan.  Thus far I have gone along with whatever opportunity presented itself and so I'll have to hope  - like Micawber - that something turns up when the time comes.