Prue Leith Audiobooks

Being Old and learning to love it, from a Bake Off judge in her eighties

1 audiobook reviewed

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Who is Prue Leith?

Dame Prue Leith, born in 1940, is a South African and British restaurateur, broadcaster, cookery writer, novelist and chef – a career of such range that former university administrator also belongs on the list; she was Chancellor of Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, from 2016 to 2024.

To most of the country, though, she is simply a fixture of food television. She judged Great British Menu on BBC Two for eleven years from 2005, then replaced Mary Berry on The Great British Bake Off in 2017 when the programme moved to Channel 4, staying until 2025. Few figures in British food have been so continuously present across so many decades, and fewer still have managed it while writing novels on the side.

Prue Leith in audiobooks

Being Old… and learning to love it! is the Leith title in our catalogue, and the subject could hardly be better matched to its author: a woman in her eighties with no evident intention of slowing down, addressing age from the inside. The exclamation mark in the title tells you the register – this is not a solemn meditation on decline.

In audio the appeal is straightforward. Leith has been a presence in British living rooms for two decades, and hearing her on the subject of growing old carries an authority no younger writer could fake. For listeners with ageing on their mind, or ageing parents, this is companionable listening with spine.