P. C. B. Newington

Campbell Newington was one of the five children of Captain Charles Newington, formerly of the 14th Sikhs, and Frances Dolman: three sisters, Beryl, Gladys and Winifred, and a brother, Malcolm, who became a colonel in the Indian Army. Campbell went east, first in the Sarawak Service and then as a planter. When Singapore fell in February 1942 he was interned, first in Changi Criminal Prison and then at Sime Road camp, until the release in August 1945.

His own preface tells what he did there. As the food fell away he began writing down in a notebook every recipe he could remember, and at Sime Road he founded a weekly club called Good Food. It met on the embankment outside his hut: a broken sheet of asbestos on a box for the table, the guests on stools and boxes, a menu produced and every course from cocktails to savouries discussed in detail, and after everyone had dined in imagination a speaker appointed for the next meeting. Recipes were exchanged with the women's camp through the inter-camp post, in return for flower and vegetable seeds.

Two years after the war, settled at Ipoh in Perak, he had the notebook printed by Charles Grenier and Co. of Station Road, with a foreword by the state's Assistant Food Controller and a cover and chapter drawings by his sister. It was for the householders of post-war Malaya who were learning to cook for themselves, and it was not, he wrote, meant for the beginner. Beyond this book the record is thin: no second edition has been traced, and no other title. Their mother, Frances, wrote two pieces for Beryl's Family Week-End Book; it was a family that wrote, drew and cooked together.