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ABOUT THIS BOOK

PUBLISHER: Faber & Faber

ISBN: 9780571384112

RRP: £10.99

PAGES: 256

PUBLICATION DATE:
June 5, 2025

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Crunch: An Ode to Crisps

Natalie Whittle

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 such as Hula Hoops, to the popularity of ‘hand-cooked’ gourmet flavours today.

Along the way, Natalie will get to the heart of her own lifelong passion for crisps – exploring why they are bound up in ideas of childhood, nostalgia and comfort. Featuring crisp collectors, potato growers, flavour wizards and more, CRUNCH is a moreish read spanning 150 years of crisp history.

Reviews of Crunch: An Ode to Crisps

'This book is full of tasty morsels . . . A great present for the snacky gourmand.'
Pandora Sykes

'An absolute tour de force . . . I devoured it until the very last crumb and then licked the packet.'
Felicity Cloake

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Natalie Whittle

Natalie Whittle is a writer and editor based in Glasgow. Born and raised in South Wales, she read English Literature at University College London, and lived in Paris for three years working as a Time Out Paris journalist. 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. Her first non-fiction book, The 15-Minute City, was published by Luath Press in 2021.