Remembering A.A. Gill: Writer & Restaurant Critic

A.A. Gill, the food and culture writer whose wit and unrelenting critical eye made him a favourite of readers, died on Saturday of cancer at age 62. Born in Edinburgh to English parents, his father was a television producer and director, and his mother an actress. Gill’s no-holds-barred, occasionally incendiary style never evaded a chance for honesty. His professional life was seemingly devoted to courting controversy as a restaurant critic, travel writer and television reviewer. In 2010, the Sunday Times disclosed he had been the subject of 62 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission in the previous five years, none of them upheld.

Gill began his writing career in his thirties, writing art reviews for small magazines. His big break into journalism came in 1991 when Jane Procter, then editor of Tatler, asked him to write about his detox experiences. She was so impressed by his article, which was published under the pseudonym Blair Baillie, that she hired him to write a cookery column. Two years later he began writing for the Sunday Times as the paper’s TV and restaurant critic, during which time, “he quickly established himself as their shiniest star,” according to Observer writer Lynn Barber. He also worked as a columnist for Esquire magazine and wrote about fatherhood for GQ. Sunday Times editor Martin Ivens said: “His wit was incomparable, his writing was dazzling and fearless, his intelligence was matched by compassion.”

Gill studied art at Saint Martins and then the Slade School of Fine Art. A notable talent from an early age, he was also an alcoholic who, at 30, was told by doctors he would be dead by Christmas if he didn’t stop drinking. He never drank again but wrote about his addiction in a memoir, Pour Me: A Life, published last year. Gill suffered from severe dyslexia and, consequently, all of his writing was dictated. He described what he did as “first person journalism”, and whatever he wrote he dominated the story with his inquisitiveness and distinctive personality. His frank restaurant reviews memorably inspired many nights out as well as much laughter.

(Feature image via Steve Schofield)