Gilly Smith

speaker

1,281 appearances 10 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 30 Jul

Gilly Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 5.

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Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith · Anissa Helou: Lebanon · 30 Jul 2026 podcast

We're organizing some supper clubs for a festival I'm doing in the autumn.

And I was telling her about the Conflict Cafe in London, where women from all over the world, from war-torn places in the world, will cook food as supper club and tell their story through food.

And what's interesting about that is,

is that they not only find that they're really proud of food that they thought was just food from the homeland, they see the delight in other people, but they are also able to learn to speak English.

They come out of the communities where they may not actually speak anything other than their own language to come out and cater for events.

So there is that pride in what they're cooking, but there's also that ability to transcend again

what food might have meant in their own kitchens to something that makes them more worldly.

Tell me a little bit about what you think about the use of food in enabling women to find their power.

Yeah, incredibly practical.

And things have changed enormously since you started writing about Lebanon.

With the rise of Islamophobia, for example, writing for you became different.

Can you explain what you were trying to do there?

And of course, this latest book, which is called Lebanon, a culinary celebration.

I mean, it's a real sort of legacy piece, isn't it?

And came out in June 2026, right in the middle of yet another war in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, all sorts of things have happened in Lebanon.

People have fallen into food insecurity in Lebanon, which feels extraordinary, right?

We've always associated Lebanon as the fertile crescent.

What's changed with this book?

You're celebrating it, obviously, for its enormous history and its enormous cultural impact.

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