Fran Warde grew up in the rural West Country surrounded by farms and a fantastic fruit and vegetable garden at home. As a child cooking was a passion every Saturday afternoon from the age of 7 we were encouraged to cook and our choice of recipes was cakes, honey comb toffee, pies and scones.

Following school Fran went to college and studied Hotel and Restaurant Management which covered all areas of the catering trade. This followed with a further 2-year management training course at the Café Royal; Fran was only the second girl to be admitted.

Then other continents were calling and a rucksack was with a set of kitchen knifes and the travelling cook began. Cooking and sorting fish on an Australian prawn trawler to cooking for blue-blooded royalty around the Mediterranean and ski resorts. On her return Fran ran her own restaurant and catering business, set up a cookery school and then moved into food styling and writing. Never a dull moment for this busy chef!

Since taking to the pen well computer Fran has co written The French Kitchen with Joanne Harris, Food for Friends, Party! Eat Drink Live, 30 Minute Italian and numerous cookbooks for Marks and Spencer. Fran has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers Olive, BBC Good Food, Saturday Times magazine, Waitrose Food Illustrated, Style Magazine, You Magazine, to name a few and was the Food Editor at Red for five years. Fran and Joanne are writing their next cookery book The French Market, that will be published in autumn 2005. TV work includes appearances on Good Food Live,(now Great Food Live), Light Lunch, & Ready Steady Cook. Fran also contributes recipes to the web site of Oliver Bonas where her book Food For Friends out sells all other cookery books. Home is West London with her husband and two boys.