'First Catch Your Calamari: Travels with an Appetite (A Writer's Food Diary)' by Julian Roup

Buy First Catch Your Calamari: Travels with an Appetite (A Writer's Food Diary) by Julian Roup:

Amazon (UK): click here

Amazon (US): click here

Amazon (Canada): click here

Barnes & Noble: click here

Apple Books: click here

Waterstones: click here

Here is a book for everyone who loves food and travel. It is a book that will introduce you to the foods of Africa, Europe and the USA with great company along the way. This is not a gourmand’s book of overindulgence, but a slow savouring of the food that has nourished the author’s imagination and taste over a lifetime.

The son of a baker, Julian Roup grew up in South Africa with two powerful food cultures, his mother’s French-Dutch-Norwegian heritage and his father’s Eastern European Jewish food tradition. The mix provided him with sophisticated and discerning taste buds from the earliest age.

His journeys around South Africa, Mozambique and Angola provide tales of adventurous travel well stocked with interesting food. Emigrating to the UK in 1980, he discovered a whole new world of tastes in Europe as he ventured into his new continent from Greece to Portugal, Spain to France and Italy, with visits to America’s West Coast as well. He is as interested in the taste of bread as he is in cordon bleu.

Roup is best known for his books on the environment, horse riding, fishing and politics, but now he invites you to join him on his trail out of Africa to Europe and America, with all the colour and tastes of the places he fell in love with.

This is a book that will feed your appetite to break bread and to take to the road once more in search of the best the good earth offers us.

* * *

About the author

Julian Roup is the author of three non-fiction books: a children’s book, A Day In the Life of an MP; A Fisherman in the Saddle, a memoir of growing up in South Africa; and Boerejood, which explores the miracle of peaceful change to democratic rule in South Africa in 1994.

Boerejood received critical praise from many, including the Financial Times in the UK, which described it as: “Brilliant, engaged, intelligent, personal….and funny”. The FT ran a 2,000-word feature on the book as its Weekend Magazine cover story in May 2006.

Julian Roup has a background which combines marketing, journalism and public relations.

Born in South Africa in 1950, he lived in Cape Town for the first 30 years of his life. He has a journalism degree from Rhodes University in South Africa, and worked at the Cape Times and the Cape Argus before emigrating to England in 1980, where he started off writing for the Mid Sussex Times.

He founded his own PR consultancy, Bendigo Communications, in 1993. Clients have included: Virgin Atlantic, Bonhams, Bradford & Bingley, and the Development Agency for the Western Cape in South Africa. He has also created PR campaigns for clients including the British Army, Black Horse Agencies, Christie's, the Government of Malta, the London Underground, British Rail InterCity, NSPCC, and the RSPCA.

He worked as Director of Press and Marketing for Bonhams, the international fine art auction company, for 12 years.