Mary Berry

by A. S. Dagnell

  But soon another, better job fell into Mary’s lap. Staff at an on-the-up PR firm called Bensons were looking for a recipe tester to work for various clients they had on their books. Among many other clients, they represented Stork margarine, the egg and flour marketing boards and a farm called Eden Vale. To her delight, Mary applied and got the job. Her bosses at the Dutch Dairy Bureau couldn’t recommend her highly enough and, although sad to see her go, she left for her new role with their best wishes. And the new job was even better than she could have imagined. ‘I couldn’t believe I was being paid to cook all day, every day, for everyone from the Egg Council to the Flour Advisory Board,’ Mary has said. ‘Being paid to do what I loved was a complete joy.’

  Speaking about the specifics of the role, Mary said in an interview with the Daily Mail: ‘I developed recipes, costed them out and had them photographed.’ After years of struggling to find her forte, finally Mary felt that her life had a trajectory. Alleyne, who had previously been disappointed that his daughter had struggled in her academic studies, had developed a new respect for her.

  ‘I used to go home every weekend,’ says Mary. ‘I didn’t make my life in London. And I would drive up the drive and the door would open and Dad would have a gin and tonic [ready for me] and I would think I had arrived.’ Finally Alleyne had realised that his daughter was starting to make a name for herself and was building up a well-deserved reputation.

  For Mary, it was just the start of what would soon become an even more exciting career. Even today Mary says she’s proud that both her parents were alive to witness the success she made of herself. Alleyne died aged 84 in 1993, while Margaret passed away peacefully in her sleep aged 105 on 24 May 2011, having seen her daughter become a celebrity off the back of her books and TV shows. Fittingly, considering what a big part Margaret had played in Bath’s public life, a special service of thanksgiving was held at St Stephen’s Church, Lansdown, in Bath, for the public – to ‘celebrate an exceptional life’, according to the death notice in the local newspaper. Mary and her brothers also held a private family funeral for their beloved mother. And for evermore Mary would credit her success to her parents. They were, she said, what had made the woman she would later become. ‘I think that they were proud, and Mum particularly because she had all those years afterwards,’ she told Desert Island Discs. ‘But I think Dad was proud. But you see I was proud of my father. He achieved great things in Bath. So I am proud of him, and I think perhaps he was proud of me.’ And speaking about her mother to the Bath Chronicle, Mary added: ‘The secret to her long life, she would say, is to have patience, be pleasant to all around you, and enjoy what you have – not worry about what you haven’t.’ They were lessons in life that would live with Mary for some time.

  But, at the start of her glittering career the sadness of her parents’ deaths lay a long way in the future, and at the time Mary couldn’t have been happier with her life in London. It was the late 1950s and the capital was an exciting place to live. The postwar boom was gathering pace and, after many years of rationing, the decade was proving to be a prosperous one. Growing affluence gave young Londoners a new assertiveness – they were inspired to live life to the full after the doom and gloom of the war. And, after years of soul-searching and wondering what to do with her life, Mary at last felt she had a place in the world as she went from strength to strength in her job at Bensons. She was one of the top-performing workers at the business and was thought of by the company’s many influential clients as one of the best.

  But despite being more than content with life, an exciting and unexpected career change was about to be thrust upon Mary – the opportunity to start writing for a woman’s magazine called Housewife. This was to change the course of her professional life forever.

  At the time, women’s magazines were a booming trade. The 1950s was described as ‘the golden age of women’s magazine publishing’ by Esther Walker in the Independent. Walker’s article gives us an insight into the history of women’s magazines through the years. At that time five out of six British women were said to have read at least one women’s magazine a week – an incredible statistic that showed just how rapidly the market was growing. And while nowadays you might expect the latest female celebrity to adorn the cover, back in the 1950s, Walker says, if ‘the front cover showed a picture of a happy woman holding a pie, it could sell as many copies as it could print’. Whereas today magazine editors might toil over catchy cover lines relating to showbiz, sex and style to reel readers in, the mere mention of cookery and homemaking was enough to captivate the stay-at-home mums of the 1950s.

  While women’s magazines were particularly flourishing in that era, they had a long and rich history dating back to the seventeenth century. The first to be published was the Ladies’ Mercury. It was the brainchild of John Dunton, a professional bookseller who had edited the Athenian Mercury. Although the Athenian Mercury only published a few editions, it laid the ground for hundreds upon hundreds of other similar magazines. Printing technology during the 1700s and 1800s meant that it was impossible to illustrate the covers of magazines. But unlike today, there was no need to have a striking, eye-catching front cover in order to boost circulation, because the magazines weren’t sold on newsstands. In fact, very rarely did any of them include pictures. The first to include an illustration was the June 1891 edition of The Woman’s Herald, which included a drawing of a surly-looking Adeline Sergeant, a popular novelist at the time who often wrote about divine providence (and whose work has recently been given a new lease of life since being made available in the form of free e-books).

  However, by the start of the 1900s, printing had developed to such a degree that all women’s magazines could start to include colour illustrations. Walker said: ‘Throughout the twenties and thirties, rather than today’s lone cover girl, the front page often showed pictures of two or more people – sometimes a couple ice-skating.’ To today’s reader, it now seems that the more twee the cover image, the better a magazine sold. That image of a couple ice-skating was used on a cover of a January issue of the American edition of Good Housekeeping. That particular magazine became such a success stateside that it was brought to Britain in 1922 by the National Magazine Company. Understandably, there was a sea change in the approach to the content of women’s magazines during the Second World War. Life became tough for women, many of whom were staying at home while their husbands were at war. As Walker said, magazines went from ‘being a folly, however helpful, to being a true friend to women … The challenges facing women were hard and unknown and the government used magazines as a way of communicating with the ever-more important home front.’

  No longer did men feature on the front covers alongside women – now it was about having the woman standing by herself – independent, forthright and ready to take on the world. With their men at war, women were being forced to look out for themselves, and this was reflected in magazine covers of the time. On a 1945 cover of Woman, for example, a woman is seen plucking her eyebrows, or wearing an apron, or carrying corn, as was the case on the front cover of My Home from that same year.

  As the postwar economy picked up and women became enchanted with the prospect of leading more exciting lives, the popularity of women’s magazines continued to soar. Often they provided straightforward advice – with a large part of this dedicated to cookery. It was during the 1950s that magazines started to be sold on the newsstands. Prior to that, these magazines had predominantly been sold by subscription, with a few on sale in shops. The new development meant that editors had to find a way to encourage women who didn’t know which magazine to pick to buy theirs – by using visually striking front covers packed with colour, and exciting taglines promising not-to-be-missed content. Walker notes that in one issue of Home Chat in 1955 cover lines were laid out with ‘swooping lettering set at jaunty angles’. As long as women’s magazines ticked certain boxes and fulfilled certain criteria, they would sell copies. Undoubtedly, one of those boxes was coo
kery – editors knew the importance of giving the subject due prominence in order to entice new readers. All women’s magazines during this time dedicated a large chunk of their pages to cookery – as many still do today. Recipes, tips for creating the perfect Sunday lunch and ‘agony aunt’-style columns in which experts answered readers’ letters about problems they were having in the kitchen all featured heavily. Women would write in with queries about recipes and ask for help in choosing the best kitchen utensils.

  It was against this backdrop that Mary was about to make an unexpected move into journalism. While she was still working at Bensons, the opportunity of some work came up at Housewife magazine, a popular title during the 1950s. The cookery editor had gone abroad, and the magazine needed cover for her position. Such was Bensons’ reputation, the editor of Housewife contacted the firm to see if they had anyone suitable who could cover for the cookery editor. Immediately and without hesitation, Mary’s boss recommended her.

  Well, she didn’t so much as recommend her, but instructed her that she would do it. ‘While I was there, my boss said, “Housewife’s cookery editor has gone to Spain on a press trip and the pages aren’t done. You will do it,”’ Mary told Desert Island Discs.

  Her insistence that Mary would take the work presented Mary with a dilemma. While it was an exciting development in her blossoming career, she knew full well how she had struggled with her studies at school. The words of her former school headmistress Miss Blackburn telling her she would never have a career rang in her ears. Mary was reluctant to take on the challenge and she made this known to her female boss.

  ‘I said, I can cook, I can write recipes, but I can’t do any more,’ said Mary. ‘I didn’t pass English in my school cert.’

  However, her boss came up with a solution. She told Mary to say the recipes out loud, as though she were talking someone through them in the kitchen. And as Mary said it out loud, she (the boss) would write the words Mary was saying down. It proved to be an ingenious technique … and one that lived on with Mary as she wrote her 70 cookbooks over the subsequent 50 years. ‘[My boss] said, you write the recipe as you talk to me,’ Mary told Desert Island Discs. ‘And I have always thought, I am chatting to the person who is doing the recipe.’

  Bolstered by her boss’s confidence, Mary realised the offer was too good to turn down and she agreed to go ahead with the assignment. Irrespective of her writing abilities, her passion for cooking shone through, and the simple, conversational style of her recipes was a hit with readers. No-nonsense and easy to follow, they were perfect for Housewife magazine. Very soon, the editors at Housewife were impressed by their new recruit and started to offer her work regularly whenever anything suitable arose.

  As TV started to really take off during the 1960s, so the sales of women’s magazines began to slide. The market had to modernise. Walker notes that in 1965, the publishing company IPC launched Nova, which was branded ‘The new kind of magazine for a new kind of woman’. The front cover of the first issue was mostly black and highly stylised – the cover girl was reduced to a close-up image of a heavily made-up eye, and a large block of text proclaimed that Nova was a magazine that did things ‘the 1965 way’. But although circulations may have not been what they once were, women’s magazines still played a huge part in British journalism.

  After years of working for Housewife on a part-time basis, Mary received a call. It was the editor of the magazine, with whom she had formed a good relationship over the years. The news was that there was a vacancy. The cookery editor had left to pursue other projects and they wanted to offer Mary the job. Despite having had initial reservations about getting involved with Housewife magazine, Mary had at that point been freelancing for them for some five years and she was thoroughly enjoying it – so she decided to take the plunge, leaving Bensons to take up a full-time role at Housewife in 1966. Mary spent four years there, becoming an integral part of the magazine as she ran the cookery section’s recipes and columns single-handedly.

  She then moved to Ideal Home magazine, into which Housewife was incorporated in 1970, and stayed there until 1973. The magazine’s offices were based in central London. However, after marrying her husband Paul in 1966, Mary stopped living in London full-time and moved to the Buckinghamshire countryside where they set up their family home. Mary commuted to and from the capital on a daily basis, with the journey rarely taking more than an hour.

  Ideal Home magazine went on to become one of the biggest in Britain. Today, Ideal Home is the UK’s best-selling interiors magazine, with audited circulation figures for January to June 2012 sitting at just over 193,000 each month. The readership of the monthly magazine, meanwhile, was an impressive 1.035 million for the same period. The magazine’s mantra today is that it has been ‘empowering home-owners to make the most of their properties for over 80 years’. It had been launched in 1920, by the publishing company Odhams, as a direct rival to Homes & Gardens, published by their arch-enemies Newnes and launched in 1919. The magazine’s first editor, Captain GC Clarke, said that Ideal Home aimed to strive against ‘the erection of hideous houses which go to mar the beauty of what would under any other circumstances be the most ideal and beautiful environment’. This was a reference to the then government’s promise, in 1921, to build 100,000 houses as part of its postwar planning. There was a general feeling that the government’s attitude of building as many properties as quickly as possible would mean that design, comfort and ambience were being neglected. Despite the recent hardships of the war, families still wanted their homes to be enjoyable places in which to unwind, and this was why magazines such as Ideal Home became so hugely popular.

  However, there was another reason why interior design magazines were being published in such abundance at the time. Following the end of the Great War, there had been a servant shortage. As a result, the middle classes, for the first time, had needed to learn how to run every aspect of their households, either totally by themselves or with very little and infrequent help. The launch of Homes & Gardens and Ideal Home and, later, the creation of a UK version of the popular US magazine Good Housekeeping in 1922, reflected these social changes and their impact on the market. Ideal Home, however, was undoubtedly leader of the pack and continued to supply interior decoration ideas for generations to come. Its popularity peaked in 1991, when it sold nearly half a million copies during the course of the year. Every issue includes a 20-page section dedicated to kitchen and bathroom makeovers. The emphasis is on simplicity and cost-effectiveness – features focus on easy ways for the readers to get the looks that adorn the pages of the magazine. Nowadays the magazine also includes articles on interior design, readers’ homes, high-street shopping news and consumer advice. Sections such as the Savvy Shopper buyers’ guides help readers make informed choices when choosing key appliances, the latest technology, and major investments such as large pieces of furniture. Another regular feature is Simple Solutions, intended to make everyday life easier – from low-maintenance garden ideas to time-saving household tips. Over the years, the magazine has constantly tried to reinvent itself – for example, it underwent a design and content revamp with its May 2010 issue (which actually hit the newsstands at the end of March). It now sports new features, typography and layout along with a redesigned logo. Despite being primarily focused on interiors, the magazine’s editors never lost sight of the importance of cookery’s role in creating the sought-after domestic bliss, so recipes featured heavily – and this, of course, was Mary’s remit.

  As the popularity of cookery sections in magazines grew, so too did cookery books. Cookbooks were becoming big business during the late 1960s, as social and economic changes meant that servants and housemaids were less common, so more and more women were getting used to being self-sufficient in the kitchen. Housewives lapped up simple recipes that they could put together quickly for lunch with friends or for dinner once their husbands returned home from work, or increasingly, once they returned home from their own jobs. The emphasis
was on traditional dishes that could be quickly put together at little cost.

  At this point in history, cookery books in Britain had already had a long and rich history. To begin with, though, food was only ever one aspect covered by them. The author and journalist William Sitwell said: ‘Mrs Beeton’s late-nineteenth-century Book of Household Management was not novel in detailing everything from how to calculate your income tax, apply a bandage or deal with bad dreams alongside ideas for roly-poly jam pudding and veal olives. Thomas Dawson’s The Good Huswife’s Jewell of 1596 explains how “to restore speech that is lost suddenly” (you push a concoction of herbs up your nose) and includes an early diet plan – “For to make one slender” merely requires the brewing up of some fennel tea.’

  However, for many decades after the First World War, cooking was an often tedious and dispiriting endeavour. As household help was scaled back, well-to-do women started to feel inseparable from the stove. Cooking became a necessity – rather than an activity to be enjoyed for its own sake. However, cookbooks played their part in turning this around. They showed women that spending time in the kitchen didn’t have to be a chore, but could instead be a creative, enjoyable and enriching process. Cooking was gradually coming back into fashion. Sitwell noted: ‘Women actually felt more chained to the kitchen than ever. Cooking became a drudgery and it took the likes of Elizabeth David, with her 1950 A Book of Mediterranean Food, to bring some glamour to the kitchen, celebrating delicious ingredients and the spirit of warmth from sunnier climes.’ Developments in printing technology meant that producing full-colour, illustrated books with diagrams and photography became ever more economical, so cookery books evolved from the rather stark and bland tomes of the early twentieth century to more attractive objects. It became a pleasure to flick through for mealtime inspiration from the late 1970s onwards.