Prue Leith CBE

About

Prue Leith is a TV presenter, cookery writer and novelist. She was a judge the Great British Menu for eleven years, before joining The Great British Bake Off in 2017, replacing Mary Berry, when the show moved to Channel 4.

In 1960 Prue moved to London to attend Cordon Bleu and then began a business supplying high-quality business lunches. This grew to become Leith’s Good Food, a party and event caterer. In 1969 she opened Leith’s, her Michelin-starred restaurant in Notting Hill, eventually selling it in 1995. In 1975, she founded Leith’s School of Food and Wine, which trains professional chefs and amateur cooks.

Food Writer

Concurrently with running her business, Leith became a food columnist for, successively, the Daily Mail, Sunday Express, The Guardian and the Daily Mirror. Aside from writing 12 cookery books, including Leith’s Cookery Bible, she has written seven novels.

When chair of the Royal Society of Arts she founded and chaired the charity Focus on Food which promotes cooking in the curriculum. She also started, with the charity Training for Life, the Hoxton Apprentice. The organisation is a not-for-profit restaurant which for ten years trained the most disadvantaged long-term unemployed young people.

Leith has been a non-executive director of British Rail; British Transport Hotels; Safeway; Argyll plc, the Leeds Permanent Building Society; Whitbread plc; Woolworths plc; the Halifax; Triven VCT; Omega International plc; and Belmond Hotels Ltd (formerly Orient Express Hotels) and is a director and investor in several start-up companies.

Leith’s honours include the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year in 1990 and thirteen honorary degrees or fellowships from UK universities.

Get in touch with Useful Chefs for more information on booking celebrity chefs for any commercial purpose.