Let me begin with a Weisfeld warning. This is not a conventional celebrities cookbook. It is a book about people who like good food - which isn't always one and the same thing. The man or woman who coined the phrase, "We are what we eat" knew a lot about life. When people drop their guards a little, and tell you what they really, really, like to eat it's surprising just how much of their inner selves they reveal. In this book, the recipes are often dishes very public people like to prepare for themselves in their own private moments (indeed, quite a few of the recipes we received were hand-written). To my mind, that is much more interesting territory, altogether, than a standard cookery book. I hope you think so too.

The vast majority of the recipes contributed have actually been tested for us and the remainder have been checked over by experts. But bear in mind, these are recipes largely the way individual people like to make them, and personal preferences can be variable. When you encounter, for example, Cliff Richard's favourite, a lot of eyebrows will shoot up in surprise. No, I'm not going to spoil it for you. Read the book.

As the emphasis is on people, Recipes for Life is categorised into its various sections by groupings of personalities, rather than by recipes. It means, of course, that every section contains a full range of dishes, progressing from soups and starters through snacks, vegetable and fish dishes, to pasta, poultry and meat dishes to desserts and cakes. There is also a Section devoted to contributions from my family and friends, as well as one covering dishes from many of the world's grand hotels. It's a "lucky dip" which, hopefully, throws up something interesting or unexpected every time the reader browses though.

Recipes for Life - Online, contains a varied selection of recipes from the book. Each section is represented with at least one example, and the sections are updated with new recipes regularly. There are also Theme Menus, each one appropriate to the time of the year - this month we have 'Oscar Night' and 'St Patrick's Day Dinner'.