The Daily Telegraph new party book - Evelyn Payne

A charming piece of retro publishing from Macmillan and the Daily Telegraph - perfect for that stocking filler for your food-loving friends and family coupled with a healthy dose of rather thrilling nostalgia: Aunt Elaine in her ballet dress as the good fairy at a small child's birthday party anyone? Let alone how to dress the table for a buffet, which entails much pleating and folding. But though some of the strange things that were expected of the bourgeois housewife of 1963 (between the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP as Larkin so memorably said - though that was about sex not linen swags) might surprise a twenty-first century hostess, the book is packed with really good and useful recipes. It is also full of practical help on party planning and will be your first port of call as you plan your grand occasions, be it dinner for four, a buffet for fifty, a twenty-first birthday bash, a wedding or a children's tea party.