Dictators’ Dinners: A Bad Taste Guide to Entertaining Tyrants

"a cookbook like no other"—Mail Online

"Victoria Clark and Melissa Scott set out to bite off a very specific bit of history with their new book"—The Dinner Party Download

"From Stalin's all-night Georgian banquets to Hitler's obsessive vegetarianism, a new book spills the beans on their dinner tables"—The Guardian

"The worst despots of the 20th century have been subjected to culinary scrutiny in new book Dictators' Dinners —and it's fascinating stuff."—The Telegraph

Might the path to true knowledge of any great dictator lead through his stomach?

What did dictators eat? Sometimes simply obscene amounts of the best their nations could offer, but more often their despots' humble origins, or embarrassing medical conditions, or simple lack of interest in or time for food meant their tastes were surprisingly unpretentious—ranging from human flesh, to raw garlic salad, to Quality Street . . .

Dictators' Dinners is an investigation into what some of the world's most notorious twentieth-century despots have enjoyed most at their dinner table, and with whom. Here we learn of their foibles, their eccentricities and their frequent terror of poisoning—something no number of food tasters was ever able to assuage.

Victoria Clark formerly Moscow correspondent for the Observer, with long experience also in the Balkans, has previously published in the fields of Byzantine Orthodox Church and the history of Middle East Christianity.

Melissa Scott started a career in broadcasting with the satellite television channel MBC before going on to work on freelance projects in publishing.