Nationality English | Occupation Food historian | |
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Full Name Polly Elisabeth Russell Books The Kitchen Revolution: A Year of Time-and-Money-Saving Recipes People also search for Rosie Sykes, Zoe Heron, Giles Coren | ||
Polly Elisabeth Russell (born 1971) is a food historian and curator at the British Library with responsibility for research on social science and food. She writes food history column for the Financial Times weekend magazine and in 2015 she was the co-presenter of the BBC television series Back in Time for....
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Early life
Polly Russell was born in Surrey, England, in 1971. She received her advanced education at the University of Exeter from where she earned a first class bachelor's degree in American and Commonwealth Arts (1990–1994). She earned a master's degree in journalism from Louisiana State University (1995–1996).
Career
After graduating, Russell received a research stipend to spend a year researching food in Louisiana, after which she returned to the U.K., where she worked as a kitchen junior at The Carved Angel and Moro Restaurant. She joined Marks & Spencer in July 1997, where she worked in product development, after which she completed her PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2003.
Russell was a research fellow at the University of Sheffield from 2003 to 2007 and from 2003 has been a freelance food writer and researcher. She joined the British Library in 2007 as Lead Curator for Human Geography and Anthropology. Since 2008 she has been curator in Social Sciences. At the British Library, Russell has worked on the Sisterhood & After: An Oral History of the Women's Liberation Movement project and on the digitisation of Spare Rib magazine.
She has written "The History Cook" column in the FT Weekend magazine since 2012 and in 2015 she presented the television series Back in Time for... with Giles Coren on BBC television.