Raw : The Autobiography

by Antony Worrall Thompson

Antony Worrall Thompson's passage to culinary stardom has not exactly been smooth. Abandoned by his father, a Shakespearean actor, when he was just three, Antony was sexually abused and maltreated throughout his childhood. His extra-curricular activities at boarding school included pushing cars into the swimming pool and generally getting on the teacher's nerves.





Antony's story very nearly came to an abrupt halt at sixteen when his face was crushed in a horrific rugby accident, which left him badly disfigured and chronically insecure. But pioneering surgery saved the day, enabling him to pursue what was to become the enduring love of his life - cooking.





After much hard graft and some close encounters of the violent gangster kind, AWT's flamboyant style as a restaurateur soon bought him to the attention of cookery's cognoscenti. Things didn't always run according to plan, however - he once had to serve tinned tomato soup, tarted up with croutons and basil, to the customers in his restaurant because there wasn't time to make his own from scratch. (They loved it.) And today Antony is to the culinary establishment what a bull is to a china shop. His no-nonsense style in the kitchen is loathed by a few, but loved by millions.





Stuffed with hugely entertaining anecdotes and lightly sprinkled with AWT's no-holds-barred opinions, RAW is a heartrendingly honest story of triumph over adversity. Along the way we go behind the scenes with the foodie mafia and Antony lifts the lid on a few triple-Michelin-starred scandals. The knives (and the forks!) are very definitely out ...

Genres: Biography, Autobiography

400 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2003

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very readable autobiography and was quite amusing but sadly AWT comes out of it looking like a real arse.

His childhood was pretty rough but he claims it made no difference to him and how he turned out. I beg to differ. He is so horribly sexists (and would deny this I think by saying he loves women, he married three of them after all!) and treats the women in his life, with the exception in the book of his most recent wife, with just disdain. Marrying women , one almost because he threatened/promised/bet he’d be married by Christmas is not respectful of women or indicates any kind of an actual love for our gender. To me it speaks of disregard.

But if you read the book and have revealed to you the horrid women he met in his childhood, I think you too would draw a parallel. That and no male figure at all was bound to screw him up. Terrible combination really.
Even the women he claims to love and respect he always has to describe in terms of their appearance. Every bloody time. And then he will admit they were organised or, even worse I think, feisty! Men are never described as feisty!

But for an autobiography it was very readable. I didn’t dislike him enough to want to stop reading until very close to the end. And he did have a really interesting life and did a whole load of stuff.
This is a pretty raw book too – he tells it as it is, even when he was being the idiot. But under it all I felt some arrogance hidden under the bushel of a lack of self-esteem. Justifying your appalling sexist chat up lines (I guess a f*** is out of the questions) delivered to staff members as being because you are too shy to know how to talk to women does not cut it for me.

A great cook not a great man

But maybe it’s because I don’t find cads or lovable rogues very lovable. Others do
If you are interested in cooking as I am, it is worth reading. If you like AWT, it is definitely worth reading. And in fact if you just like autobiographies, it is probably worth reading too. Just don’t expect to necessarily feel warm and fuzzy about the author.

[Penny Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't have any particular interest in food, or AWT himself, but I enjoy memoirs and I found this in a charity box. What a fascinating story! I was up late into the night reading about his exploits. He's certainly had an interesting life! He does come across as rather pugnacious and difficult at times, but since his childhood was so appalling this is not surprising. I was shocked to read of how he was treated by his mother, and of his experiences at boarding school. The book is well written (apparently he did not use a ghost writer) and a real page turner. Highly recommended.

[Wendy Brennan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Autobiography. Very readable. Likeable character to begin with, gradually start to dislike!

[Tracy]

BIt of a big mouth so and so this man!