Dictators' Dinners

What did dictators eat? Sometimes simply obscene amounts of the best their nations could offer, but more often their humble origins, or embarrassing medical conditions, or simple lack of interest in food meant their tastes were unpretentious—ranging from human flesh, to raw garlic salad, to Quality Street.  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. For a selection of 25 former national figureheads across the world, each section comprises an outline of the dictator's history, a short essay on their particular eating habits, table manners, digestive systems etc. and one or two of their favorite recipes.

Victoria Clark is an award-winning former Observer foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe and Moscow between 1989 and 1996. She has written five works of non-fiction. Melissa Scott, an Arabic-speaker, worked in the newsroom of MBC satellite television before moving into editorial work in the publishing industry.