“It is time to write this story, my story and the story of Gypsies” – author Caleb Botton nominated for award
“At the very centre of the Gypsy world, is ‘family’. You cook for your loved ones. You cook with passion. You cook with the knowledge that you are continuing an extraordinary legacy”
Caleb Botton is celebrating after hearing that his planned book Fire & Feast: Stories and Recipes from the Gypsy Table has been nominated for a Jane Grigson Trust literary award for non-fiction books still in development.
Botton, who comes from a “famous” Romanichal family and is related to Tyson Fury and Bartley Gorman, is hoping that the award will help to kick start the promotion of his book – which is set to be published Ebury Press, a Penguin imprint, in April next year.
The Travellers Times caught up with Caleb Botton in a phone call as he took a break from writing.
“Fire & Feasts is cultural story telling conveyed through the medium of food,” said Botton. “It chronicles the marginalised and overlooked culture of British Romany Gypsies and Travellers with the honesty and humanity it deserves. This forgotten heritage which has been passed over and dismissed by wider society and food writing captures this tradition with respect, and depth; as I am a full-blooded British Romani Gypsy and this is my lived life and experience of my family, culture and people,” he adds.
“People think Traveller’s food is wild, exotic and secret. But really, it’s practical, local and fresh. It was formed by necessity and survival and borrows shamelessly from what’s around. What it gives back is full stomachs and comfort. We started by cooking what the butchers didn’t want and made those cuts, the ones with connective tissue, fat and flavour, better than it had any right to be. That is our food and our skill.”
Botton’s road to becoming an author with a book deal with the prestigious Ebury Press has been a long and winding one, having left school at 12 - “because of a death in the family I had to go to work” – through returning to education as an adult, then taking a course that “unlocked” his dyslexia and going on to gaining a degree at a London university.
This education then kick-started a career as a globe-trotting screen-writer, film maker and lecturer, but Botton always wanted to return to his Romany roots as a creative and a chance meeting on an island near Bali gave him his muse and his inspiration:
“I watched an old woman crouch down on a dirt street making food over an open flame. She threw in greens, spices and created an aromatic delight. It reminded me of my own grandmother, preparing our meals over the fire.”
The memories of growing up with Gypsy and Traveller food resonated so much in the flames of the woman’s wok that he immediately started to write.
“At the very centre of the Gypsy world, is ‘family’. You cook for your loved ones. You cook with passion, says Botton. “You cook with the knowledge that you are continuing an extraordinary legacy,” he adds.
“Romany cuisine has never been given the thoughtful, literary or the historically grounded representation it deserves,” says Botton.
“My project proposes to be one of the first works to treat this subject with the seriousness, beauty, and cultural insight it deserves and making it a much-needed addition to mainstream food writing,” he adds.
“Part history, part memoir and rooted in remembrance, it’s testimony of how people move, endure, and survive. My writing approaches Romany recipes as forms of cultural record. I hope this contributes something new and necessary to British food literature and amplifies voices long ignored in British food culture.”
“It is time to write this story, my story and the story of Gypsies.”
The winning author of The Jane Grigson Trust – Sous Chef Award for New Food and Drink Writers 2026 will be announced at an evening event at Quo Vadis on Tuesday 17 March.
Mike Doherty for Travellers Times News
(All photographs courtesy of Caleb Botton)