As Dame Mary Berry enters her 10th decade, she reflects on the highs and lows of her extraordinary life. “Nothing is better than now,” she tells Emma Higginbotham
Dame Mary Berry has been a comforting fixture on our screens for decades, but her very first TV appearance didn’t feature any of her classic cakes or cockle-warming dishes. It was 1971 and Mary, already a bestselling cookbook author, was asked to create a Georgian feast for a BBC2 antiques show – with delicacies including pike, ox eyes and sparrows. And that wasn’t the worst of it.
“An udder with four teats arrived,” she says with a grimace. “There it was on the kitchen table, all pink and flabby. I cut it up and cooked it for hours and hours, and made it into a pie.” How was it? “As tough as old boots! One of the strangest things that I’ve ever eaten.”
There are no bovine appendages in her latest cookbook, Mary 90: My Very Best Recipes. Instead, it’s everything you’d expect from the doyenne of home cooking – showstopping bakes and disaster-proof dishes ranging from tarts to tagines. Tying in with an upcoming BBC series of the same name, the book is also peppered with memories and photographs from her astonishingly long life, and a career that went stratospheric when she joined The Great British Bake Off at the age of 75, when she could have been pottering in her beloved garden and taking well-earned naps. Yet 15 years on, the culinary queen is still going strong, and glowing with good health as we chat at a country club near her home in Henley-on-Thames.
“I’m chuffed to bits with the book. It was very exciting to do because it was for my 90th, and gosh it's a celebration,” says Mary, shaking her halo of snowy hair. How does it feel to be in her tenth decade? “I don’t really feel it,” she shrugs. “I'm blessed that I’m very well. I'm fit, I can stride out – I love walking. Also I'm immensely lucky that I still have my husband at 93, when so many of my girlfriends have sadly lost theirs. It's very lovely to come home after a busy day, and there he is with a glass of wine ready,” she beams. “And then he says ‘What's for supper?’”
She’s had “loads” of parties for the big nine-oh, including friends on the day itself, a large family bash, and a lunch in London for her behind-the-scenes team, from home economists to make-up artists. “That was really special. All these wonderful people that help me were there looking gorgeous, and it was so exciting to see the aprons off. I'm afraid I love a party,” she adds. “Because I'm a cookery writer, and a lot of recipes say ‘it’s good for a crowd’, I think it's essential to have parties to practise what I'm preaching.” Well quite.
Mary-Rosa Alleyne Berry was born on 24 March 1935. Her father Alleyne, a surveyor, was later mayor of Bath, and her Scottish mother Marjorie was a housewife. A great beauty, she was still wearing high heels until her death at 105.
Sandwiched between two brothers, Mary was an outdoorsy child who spent hours building dens, climbing trees and riding ponies. “I loved it,” she says. “I was totally happy.” She wasn’t so happy at school. “It interfered with playtime! I liked break, and I quite liked netball, but I didn't do much work. I made sure that I got there early so that I could bag a desk at the back of the class, then you didn’t get worried by teachers asking you things. They always choose the nice bright ones at the front.”
The one lesson where she shone was domestic science, not least thanks to the inspirational Miss Date. “She was knee-high to a grasshopper, with a huge smile. She wasn't like a teacher at all. She was like a friend, and I wanted to do well for her.”
Cooking came naturally to young Mary. She had a blissful year under Miss Date until, aged 13, her life hung in the balance when she contracted polio. “I was never ill. No time to be ill! But I can remember being in bed, and the doctor came,” she recalls. “There was a lot of quiet talking with my parents, and I was whipped off to the isolation hospital.
“I was put in a room with glass either side, and I couldn't lift my head or my body. It was quite frightening. And your parents couldn't come in and hug you because it was infectious. I could see their anxious faces through the doors, and I thought, ‘Am I going to get better?’”
A month in isolation and 10 weeks on a hospital ward later, she eventually recovered. “I was immensely lucky to only been left with a slightly weak left side, and a slightly curved spine,” she says. “But it hasn't affected me.”
Mary studied at the Bath College of Domestic Science before, aged 19, bagging a job with the local electricity board, demonstrating how to use new-fangled electric cookers. After completing her Cordon Bleu in Paris, she joined a London PR company, developing and testing recipes for their foodie clients. One day she was invited to write a feature for the quaintly titled Housewife magazine. The editor liked it so much that she offered her a job as food editor, which kicked off her career in journalism and cookbook writing. Meanwhile she married her brother’s friend Paul Hunnings at the “pretty ancient” age of 31 (making her own wedding cake, naturally), but kept her maiden name – and kept working. She was back at her desk just five weeks after having her first son, Tom, in 1968. William and Annabel followed soon after.
Her career switched up a notch when she made the aforementioned udder pie for Collector’s World. How did it feel to be on camera? “I was terrified beforehand, but I was so concentrating on the dishes that there wasn't time to be afraid,” recalls Mary. “Once I'd finished, I thought ‘this is like a big cookery class! If I'm offered any more, I will love it’.
She didn’t have to wait long. The producer of ITV’s Good Afternoon, presented by Judith Chalmers, offered her a monthly half-hour slot, and she quickly became a TV regular alongside writing bestselling cookery books. Then in 1989, tragedy struck.
On a Saturday morning in January, 19-year-old William, a student at Bristol Poly, drove off with Annabel to buy a newspaper. By lunchtime they still hadn’t returned. “When the policeman came to the door, I knew,” says Mary. The policeman told them William had died (“He was driving too fast, which was unlike him”), but didn’t know about Annabel. They raced to the hospital, “and I can remember Annabel running down the corridor, in a mud-covered pink tracksuit. And I thought we are blessed that we’ve got her.
“William was a lovely child. He was doing well, he played excellent rugby, he even enjoyed the garden, and used to have plants in his bedroom. He was very popular, worked hard... We were so proud of him,” she says, her voice cracking. “I can remember them sitting me down and bringing me tea with sugar in for the shock, and then they said would we like to see William? And I thought I would, and I'm glad I did. I can remember his little cold face looking so lovely. It was sort of farewell.”
The following weeks were unbearable. “I used to do quite a bit of work in London, and I thought, I don't want to go to London any more. Paul and I lived on soup, and kept each other company. I lost weight, because you're not hungry. We talked endlessly about William, and how fortunate we were to have had him for those 19 years. But we had to move forward, and so I thought maybe I'll have a cook school, and teach people how to use an Aga.”
Mary and her assistant, Lucy Young, began to hold day-long workshops twice a week at Watercroft, her Buckinghamshire home, and were later joined by Lucinda McCord (both still develop recipes with her to this day). Willing students came thick and fast to learn the ways of the cast iron beast. “We never advertised, ever. It was always by personal recommendation,” she says. “We enjoyed every minute of it. It meant I was at home with Paul, and it got me going again.”
After 16 wildly successful years, the ladies decided to hang up their aprons. Mary carried on doing the odd bit of freelance work, but being presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Guild of Food Writers in 2009 was, she writes in her autobiography, “a wonderful and very fitting way to mark my retirement”. Then her TV agent rang.
“She said the BBC are doing a baking show, and thought that you might like to be the judge. I thought, ‘Well, I've written the Baking Bible, and I do know about cakes – this is a lovely job for me!’ But I didn’t want to do it alone, because I didn’t want it to be my own decision. I needed someone anyway, because I'm not very good at bread.”
Mary did screen tests with various bakers, and the producer asked who she liked best. “I said, ‘It's not who I like! Who went well with me?’ And that's how I got Paul Hollywood, who is totally different from me. I think we were quite a good pair.”
The viewers agreed. Their good cop-bad cop blend worked perfectly, and Mary was a particularly kindly cop – always gently encouraging, even when faced with the soggiest of bottoms. “I love teaching. All through my life I’ve thought of myself as a teacher,” she says. “And I couldn’t bear to see anyone cry.”
With 16 million viewers at its peak, Bake Off won her global stardom (at the Good Food Show, such was ‘Berrymania’ that she had to have security guards), but when the show moved to Channel 4 six years later, Mary, along with presenters Mel and Sue, decided to call it a day out of loyalty to the BBC. That loyalty paid off, as Mary 90 will be her 11th consecutive series for the corporation.
The accompanying book (number 70-something – she’s lost count) is a very personal collection. There’s a recipe for the ‘cashew nutters’ that she served as canapes at Paul’s antiquarian bookshop events, the ‘Watercroft Chicken’ that delighted guests at her Aga workshops, and the chocolate roulade she made for Annabel’s wedding. Fans can expect the usual nifty shortcuts, such as slathering Boursin on salmon fillets for a faff-free cheesy sauce, and there are also plenty of new recipes, as Mary keeps a keen eye on the latest food trends. Some she loves (burrata, freeze-dried strawberries), some she doesn’t (“I tasted jackfruit, and thought I'm not going to bother”).
She’s also enjoying the resurgence of old-fashioned favourites: “I’d been to a restaurant and had beef cheeks, and I came bouncing back and said ‘Let’s do a recipe for the book!’ We all agree that if they're in the supermarket, then we cook them. Also, a few years ago cauliflower was just another vegetable. Now we have roasted cauliflower, and we put it in mashed potato for the topping of a pie. And I’ve grown to love chickpeas,” she adds. “We're doing more vegetarian recipes. We try to move with the times.”
Her 90th birthday celebrations may be coming to a close, but Mary will be partying again in April when she and Paul celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary. All is sunny in the Berry-Hunnings household. “I've had a wonderful life, and nothing is better than it is now,” she says. “I've got two wonderful children, five lovely grandchildren. I've still got Lucy after 36 years, and Lucinda has been with us 25 years. It's such a happy time.”
Could this, then, be the final chapter in her extraordinarily long career? No chance. “We have a new book planned for next year,” says Mary, her eyes twinkling. “There's still plenty to say.”
FOOD BITES
What did you have for breakfast? Toast with homemade marmalade, the same as I've had for the last 90 years. Well, nearly.
Three things that are always in your trolley? White grapes, Waitrose Blueprint Gavi – especially when it’s 25% off for six bottles, and carrots with tops on, if I haven’t got them in the garden, because they taste so much better.
Most famous person you've dined with? The late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. It was such a privilege. There were 12 of us for lunch – and the corgis.
Something from the book you'd like everyone to try? The most asked-for recipe is lemon drizzle cake, but I think I’d say the fragrant chicken traybake, which is a new recipe. It's all in one dish, a great family supper, and it’s delicious.
An edited version of this interview appeared in Waitrose Weekend in October 2025 (c) Waitrose