Caroline Waldegrave

As a child

I grew up in Kent, but spent a large part of my childhood – from the age of eight – at a boarding school in Staffordshire (the food was exceptionally bad). At the age of fourteen, I moved to a boarding school in Surrey, where the food was still not good, but considerably better than in Staffordshire. Whenever I went home, my favourite pastime was cooking.

As an adult

I went to learn to cook professionally as soon as I could. I started working at a catering business in 1971, set up the school in 1975, and bought the business in 1993. I am still there – I know few people who are in the same business, thirty-three years on!