Life is Sweets

Chocolate limes, buttered brazils, sherbert dib-dabs and marshmallows - as part of the Food, Glorious Food season, food writer Nigel Slater charts the origins of British sweets and chocolates from medicinal, medieval boiled sweets to the chocolate bars that line the supermarket shelves today. With adverts of the sweets everyone remembers and loves, this nostalgic, emotional and heart-warming journey transports Nigel back to his childhood by the powerful resonance of the sweets he used to buy with his pocket money. Nigel recalls the curiously small toffee that inspired him to write his memoir, the marshmallow, which he associates with his mother, and the travel sweet, which conjures up memories of his father. He marvels at the power of something as incidental as a sweet to reveal emotions, character and the past.