Prue Leith

Prudence Margaret "Prue" Leith, CBE (born 18 February 1940) has been a restaurateur, caterer, television presenter/broadcaster, journalist, cookery writer and novelist. She was born in South Africa, but her working life has been spent mostly in London. She is Chancellor of the Queen Margaret University. In March 2017, she was confirmed as Mary Berry's replacement on The Great British Bake Off.

Her father Sam worked for African Explosives, a subsidiary of ICI that produced dynamite for use in mines and became a director. From the age of five until she was 17 she attended St Mary's School, Waverley; an English independent private boarding school for girls in Johannesburg run by Anglican nuns.

In 1960, Leith started a business supplying high quality business lunches, which grew to become Leith's Good Food, a party and event caterer. In 1969, she opened Leith's, her Michelin starred restaurant. In 1975 she founded Leiths School of Food and Wine which trains professional chefs and amateur cooks. The group reached a turnover of £15m in 1993, when she sold all but the restaurant which she sold in 1995. In 1995 she helped found the Prue Leith College, (since renamed Prue Leith Chef's Academy) in South Africa.

She has been a food columnist for the Daily Mail, Sunday Express, The Guardian and the Daily Mirror. Aside from cookery books, including Leith's Cookery Bible, she has written seven novels: Leaving Patrick, Sisters, A Lovesome Thing, Choral Society, A Serving of Scandal and At Giovanni's. Her memoir, Relish, was published in 2012.

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