Michael Smith, restaurateur, food historian and broadcaster, was trained in cookery schools and restaurants in France, Switzerland, Denmark and England. On his return to Britain he began to promote, through both his writing and his lecturing, classic English recipes. The food and wine correspondent of the Yorkshire Post, he died in 1989.

Geraldene Holt's books include Diary of a French Herb Garden and Geraldene Holt's Country House Cooking. She also wrote the entries on Isabella Beeton, Eliza Acton, Hannah Glasse and others to the Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, edited by Lorna Sage.