Cooking in a Bedsitter (1961)

Have we forgotten Katherine Whitehorn? Did we ever know her? Not really. Not in North America.

The picture up top is of Whitehorn sitting before the fireplace of her London bedsit. The year was 1956, when Whitehorn was working as a magazine subeditor.

It was at Picture Post (the Life magazine of the U.K.) that Whitehorn met photographer Bert Hardy, who asked her if she would pose as a model for a story on loneliness. Hardy took a number of pictures, but this one ended up on the desk of advertising executives, who used it to sell an energy drink called Lucozade (the Gatorade of the U.K.)

In 1961 Whitehorn published a book called Kitchen in the Corner: a Complete Guide to Bedsitter Cookery, which was quickly re-named Cooking in a Bedsitter. Like Bridget Jones's Diary (1996), the book chronicled the changing roles of women in contemporary society, and was a sensation.