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The finest Spanish table olives come from an area of fifty kilometres around Seville in Andalusia, Southern Spain. The soil here is red, rich in both clay and chalk and this makes an ideal growing medium for olives. The success of the crop also depends upon the weather. The climate during May when the trees are in blossom is crucial. If the wind is too strong or the temperature too cold, the harvest will be small. If the sun and occasional rains are just right, particularly during June to September, then the harvest will be good.

Most colourful, most extraordinary and most expensive of all the world's aromatic spices — that is saffron.

Aspiring writers are always advised to be persistent in their work, to keep sending rejected manuscripts the rounds of publishers and editors until they are accepted and published. This is easy advice to give if not to follow, but the fact that it is well worth taking in all cases is borne out by the experience of a great many famous writers. The number of well‐known books which were originally refused by the publishers is as surprising as it is interesting. It might be said, in fact, that almost all authors have to endure seeing their books rejected before they achieve print and subsequent success.

Most of us have some favourite books which are read over and over again, and some might perhaps agree with Schopenhauer that “any book that is at all important ought to be at once read through twice, partly because on a second reading the connexion of its parts will be better understood, and partly because we are not in the same temper and disposition on both readings.” “Every good book,” said Charles Bray, “is worth reading three times at least.” Certainly the pleasure obtained from a really good book can usually be repeated at least once later. The experience of many famous bookmen bears that much out.

Traditional king of fruits, the apple has a very long recorded history that might perhaps be traced to the Garden of Eden. Certainly it is the best known fruit of all non‐tropical countries, and no other fruit in the world offers such an attractive variety of colours, in green, red and yellow, not to mention russet and gold.

Packeted, ready‐to‐eat breakfast foods, instant no‐work nourishment before you start the day, are such a part of the modern way of life that it's hard to believe they are now nearly 100 years old. And it all started with the so‐aptly‐named Mr Perky.

No real apple pie can be made without cloves, and the piquant little dark brown spice‐buds are a commodity known and treasured for well over 2,000 years. Indeed, they are one of the three great spices upon which whole civilisations were once built, the others being cinnamon and pepper.

The popularity of garden peas, now easily our most widely favoured green vegetable, is nothing new in the history of human food. Pea seeds were the regular food of many races of prehistoric man, wherever the wild plants grew naturally in the Middle East, Ethiopia and Mid‐Asia. The remains of such seeds have been found in many prehistoric sites, including the Swiss lake dwellings of the Bronze Age dating back some 5,000 years.

Crosby Gaige, world famous expert on spices, used to call them “aromatic substances that make dumb dishes eloquent”. None of all the many dozens of spices known to man for centuries fills this description better than mustard, chosen condiment of the Western world, and Britain's only spice.

The biologist's ‘aquatic salad plant’ is actually a member of the cabbage family and although native to Europe and Asia generally had to be introduced to North and South America, New Zealand and the West Indies. It is now widely naturalised wherever the climate is not too hot for it. Virtually a perennial crop, with only a brief ‘off’ season in summer when other green salads are plentiful, watercress is now grown on the outskirts of all large cities and is at its best in autumn and early winter, when other greenstuffs are scarce.