Born in 1896 in Leigh, Lancashire, Gertrude Bark, known as "GB", was the only child of William and Gertrude Smith. The recipe book her parents started in 1890 was contributed to by family, friends and neighbours up until the end of the Second World War. In 1923 GB moved to Leamington Spa. A century after the first pages of the book were written, GB found that each recipe conjured up a memory or story from her past and in particular her childhood in coalmining Lancashire, such as Grandma's Raised Pies which she brought out at midnight on New Year's Eve as "all the bells of heaven were bursting from the quiet town" and Cousin Dick, who in 1916 wrote home from France "arriving during some starshine night in Manchester all the way from the trenches and be sure to have a chunk of your chocolate cake in your pocket for me", but who was killed in the Battle of the Somme and never did come home. These are the recipes and the memories they evoked.