Bake it like Berry... Dame Mary Berry

Mary Rosa Alleyne Hunnings, known professionally as Mary Berry, was born in Bath, Somerset, in 1935. Baking is in Mary’s DNA, as she discovered when she starred in an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? Her

great-great-grandfather on her father’s side, baker Robert Houghton, was a successful businessman who supplied bread to a workhouse in Norwich in the 1800s. Success runs in the family as Mary’s father, Alleyne, a surveyor and planner, was Mayor of Bath in 1952 and helped establish the University of Bath. Aged 13, Mary contracted polio, resulting in a twisted spine, a weaker left hand, and a thinner left arm. Despite spending three months in hospital, away from her family, it only affected Mary’s left side and has not impeded her cooking skills. Mary went on to study at the Bath School of Home Economics and trained at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris.

Mary’s first job was at the Bath Electricity Board showroom, making home visits to customers to demonstrate how to use their new ovens. She made a guest appearance in 2015 on the BBC’s 1950s episode of the time-travelling historical documentary, Back in Time for Dinner, where Mary sold a family an electric oven on hire purchase, just as she used to do in the ‘50s! Before her television career began, Mary was a recipe tester for Bensen’s; after that, her writing career took off as she became the food editor of Housewife magazine in the Swinging ‘60s, followed by Ideal Home magazine. This enabled her to go on to write over 70 cookbooks; her debut book was published in 1970, The Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook. In the 70s, she made another debut, this time in television on the series Afternoon Plus with Judith Chalmers. Her career in the media didn’t stop there; since then, Mary has been a guest on many shows and presented cookery programmes, including a one-hour special on the BBC, in 2019, with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – A Berry Royal Christmas. This wasn’t her first dalliance with royalty; Prince Charles awarded Mary a CBE in 2012; nine years later, in 2021, the famous baker was honoured by the same royal with a damehood at Windsor Castle. The culinary queen met the Queen when she was invited to dine at Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty and the late Prince Philip; she thought the invitation was a ‘wind-up’ by her son Thomas.

In a career spanning six decades, Mary found the time to get married in 1966 to Paul J.M. Hunnings and have three children, two sons and a daughter. Tragedy struck in 1989 when Mary and Paul’s son, William, died in a car accident at 19; William’s sister, Annabel, was also in the car, but she survived. This led Mary to become a patron of the charity Child Bereavement UK, which helps grieving children and parents who have lost a child. Mary’s culinary talents were passed on to Annabel in 1994. The mother and daughter team started a range of sauces together, Mary Berry’s Salad Dressing, but there is more to Mary than her cooking talents. She enjoys tennis, playing and watching it, and nature and gardening. She has been seen at the Chelsea Flower Show and Wimbledon and is an ambassador for the Royal Horticultural Society. People love Mary because of her easy manner of passing on her cooking knowledge and recipes, and her cosy athome style makes the name Mary Berry synonymous with domesticity. At the heart of Mary’s kitchen is a warm and welcoming AGA, which is no surprise as she ran AGA workshops at home in the ‘90s, which saw 12,000 people pass through her door. She has written AGA cookbooks and user guides, some of which her assistant of 32 years, Lucy Young, co-authored. Mary’s kitchen isn’t just used for baking and cooking; it is a place for the family, including five grandchildren, to gather and for the dogs to keep warm.

Mary became a modern-day icon when she was one of the Great British Bake Off judges, inadvertently turning soggy-bottom innuendos into her catchphrase; Mary was also a judge on its spinoff, The Great American Baking Show. With no signs of slowing down, Mary, now 87, hosted The Jubilee Pudding: 70 Years in the Baking. Her mother’s side of the family passed on good genes; Mary’s mother lived to be 105, passing away in 2011. The queen of cakes and bakes will be on our TV screens for some time, with a new book out in September, Cook and Share, containing over 100 of Mary’s favourite recipes, which ties into her new BBC series.