Faber to publish a love letter to the nation’s favourite snack: crisps
By Faber author, 12 April 2024
Faber is to publish Crunch: An Ode to Crisps, a cultural history by journalist Natalie Whittle. UK & Commonwealth rights were acquired by Fiona Crosby, Senior Commissioning Editor, from Robbie Guillory at Underline Literary Agency.
We are a nation of crisp obsessives. Squashed into sandwiches on our lunch breaks and torn-open as centrepieces on pub tables, we buy tens of millions of packets every single day. But how did the humble potato snack become a national dish? Crunch: An Ode to Crisps is journalist Natalie Whittle’s love letter to the salty siren. She traces their evolution from the simplicity of salt sachets in the early 20th century, to 80s childhood favourites, to the popularity of ‘hand-cooked’ gourmet flavours today. Featuring crisp collectors, potato growers, flavour wizards and more, Crunch is a moreish read spanning 150 years of crisp history.
Natalie Whittle said:
‘I am a lifelong superfan of crisps in all their shapes, flavours and degrees of indulgence. (The bigger the bag, the better.) To have fallen under a prawn cocktail spell as a child, and now have the chance to explore the wider crisp universe for Faber, is a true delight. The research has revolutionised how I view this seemingly simple snack, and I continue to be amazed by how crisps have soaked up so much complex social and cultural change over the years. Rather than dismiss crisps as processed food, I wanted to seek out the stories of the people who have made a living from them, and to go behind the scenes of a national obsession. Crunch has been a joy to write.’
Fiona Crosby, Senior Commissioning Editor, said:
‘Crunch is a joyous book, packed with over a century of crisp cultural history. Natalie is the perfect person to conduct this journalistic deep dive and, along the way, beautifully captures why people feel so passionately about crisps – why they are bound up in ideas of childhood, nostalgia and comfort.’
Natalie Whittle is a writer and editor based in Glasgow. She worked for 15 years at the Financial Times in London, where she held editing roles across the magazine and arts sections of FT Weekend. As the FT’s food and drink editor, she won an award from the Guild of Food Writers in 2015 and also collaborated with Penguin Random House to produce a compilation of the FT’s gastronomic interviews, ‘Lunch with the FT: A Second Helping’ in 2019.
Crunch: An Ode to Crisps will be published in hardback on 10th October 2024.