Henrietta Green
Henrietta Green is a British broadcaster, food writer, and local food advocate, probably best known for her championing of British speciality food producers. Born in London, she first published directories for the industry to source fresh British produce, which was sufficiently popular for her to shift her focus from trade to the consumer. First inspired by American greenmarkets, she has organised many farmers' markets; her first, in London's Borough Market, was in 1998 and helped revive the moribund market. However, after a dispute, the market banned her from further attendance. She has been generally praised for her commitment to promoting locally grown and produced food and her passion for research. Green has regularly appeared on several radio shows, particularly on BBC Radio Four's The Food Programme, and on television, including Woman's Hour and Taste The Nation, where she judged regional cooking. An award-winning journalist, Green has also written several books. Often outspoken in her opinions, she has been highly critical of the supermarket industry
Early life
Green was born and grew up in St John's Wood, and educated at Queen's College in Harley Street. Her father was a wealthy businessman. In her youth, she went on foreign holidays, which she later said formed her early interest in food, as she would go to local food markets with the cook. In 1969, she graduated from RADA with a diploma in stage management going on to work in films and advertising commercials. She spent 18 months in India doing meditation. In 1974, Green invested in Antonia Graham's Graham and Green kitchen reject chi-chi store in Notting Hill, "an Aladdin's cave of stylish clutter for the home". One off her earliest exposures to cooking for sale was in the early 1980s when she started making chocolates in the garage of an ex-coal miner and selling it locally; she later said the location was "unexpected". She visited the United States twice, in 1979 and 1981, which, Tamasin Day-Lewis has commented, "put her on track". In 1979, Green has said, all the popular food was foreign, but when she returned two years later there had been a move towards homegrown recipes.Career
Among the "six cooks/hoteliers, thirty-one journalists/writers, thirteen publishers/editors, nine historians, seven booksellers, one filmmaker, two broadcasters... and twenty-three academics", Green took part in the Oxford Symposium on Science, Superstition and Tradition in the Kitchen in 1985. Green recognised the dearth of local produce in British cooking when compared with the culture in Europe. In the early 80s, Green visited New York, where she visited a greenmarket. Her interests shifted from food itself to its production. On her return from America—"full of gusto"—she put the idea for similar markets in London to the Greater London Council, which, however, refused her request for funding. Green has expressed her frustration with the response she received in the early days; approaching the Rare Breeds Survival Trust on where such produce could be bought, and being rejected, encouraged her to find out for herself.In 1984, she was asked by the Park Lane Hilton to act as a consultant for their Harvest Food restaurant, which allowed her the opportunity to put her ideas into practice. She later explained that, although a difficult situation at first, the kitchen staff got used to her and "they even quite the idea of scattering whole viola flowers and nasturtiums over the salads". She was able to highlight rare breeds over intensively farmed animals of the present day. This experience led to her writing British Food Finds in 1987, which was followed by Foodlovers' Guide to Britain two years later. The latter was based on work she had done with the RAC over food guide. According to Bateman, Green
Green estimated that she drove approximately researching Food Lovers' Guide, and she later held live Q&A sessions with several producers at the Good Food Show in Birmingham. In 1992, she co-founded the Euroterroirs group with Alan Davidson. With funding from the EU, the group categorised the food of the 12 nations of the bloc, with the intention of extending the number of protected foodstuffs. Green's own first food market was established at St Christopher's Place, Marylebone, in 1995.
Green also undertook radio work, appearing, for example, on BBC Radio 4's 'Questions of Taste', a food-orientated quiz, Woman's Hour, A Good Read and The Food Programme. She produced and presented The Farming Week and presented Meeting for the Meal on the same channel.
Borough Market
In 1988, there was only a single regular farmers market in the country, in Bath, Somerset. Green's establishment of the three-day Food Lovers' Fair in November 1998 in Borough Market helped the market revitalise over the following years. Green later recalled her nervousness before the fair opened: "I remember as we were about to open, standing looking at these 50 producers lined up in this slightly scummy hall, with rain dropping down on them, and thinking: "What have I done? Nobody’s going to come"... How wrong could I be? We tapped into something of the zeitgeist". The official opening of the fair was a goat getting milked by Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson.Recruiting several long-term traders was central to the future of the project, as they remained even after the three days were over, and this success convinced the market's trustees to regenerate the market completely. According to The Sunday Times this "put Borough Market on the map" as a retailer of speciality, artisanal foods. However, she was later banned from Borough Market following a dispute with the market's trustees. Green argued that "Borough just kind of elbowed me out of the project. They seemed to think they could take my idea and run with it... I was told I couldn't have a presence. It's ridiculous. I wrote their fucking cookbook." Following her parting ways with Borough Market, Green set up her own farmer's market on Rupert Street, Soho. Ed Smith's propaganda for the Borough Market trustees—called, without any apparent hint of irony, The Borough Market Cookbook—only names Green once, and that only by way of a quoted trader.