Vicky Hayward
Vicky Hayward is a British journalist and writer, based in Madrid. She grew up in England, where she studied and worked with French home cooking before and while studying history at the University of Cambridge. Her interest in social and cultural history and in food shaped ten years’ work as a book editor, initially at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and later at Booth-Clibborn Editions and elsewhere. She initiated Weidenfeld’s life and food series, commissioning The Tuscan Year, Trade Winds and Life and Food in Bengal, and Soul Food: Classic Cuisine from the Deep South, among others. Later, as a London-based features writer, she covered food stories alongside popular culture, social issues, the arts and women’s issues, and edited Cuisine Extraordinaire.
Vicky first got to know Spain as a child on family holidays and in 1990 her travel writing and journalism took her to Madrid, where she has covered food as culture, flamenco (song, guitar and dance), the visual arts and social issues. Her travel book writing on Spain includes Insight’s pocket guides to Madrid, Valencia and the Costa Blanca, and collaborations with Michelin Green Guides and Eyewitness Visual Guides. In recent years her interests in food and history have come together: she has spoken about Spanish food history and culture at various events, revised and contributed new articles on Spanish food culture for the Oxford Companion to Food, designed historical food walks in Madrid and written guest spots for blogs.
In 2017, she published the first English-language translation of the eighteenth-century Spanish culinary classic, New Art of Cookery by Juan Altamiras, complete with added narrative context and notes. It won the Jane Grigson Trust Award 2017. The Spanish edition, also published in 2017, has been awarded the Aragonese Academy of Gastronomy’s Prize for Best Gastronomic Research 2017 and Best Publication of 2017 at the National Gastronomy Awards. In 2019, the book also received the Juan Altamiras Prize: Ayuntamiento de La Almunia.
Twitter: @vickyhayw_rd
Website: www.vickyhayward.com
Book website available in both English and Spanish: