Review of ‘Ann Summers : Creator of the World Famous Bakewell Pudding’, by Paul Hudson

This review is by Julie Bunting, and was published originally in The Peak Advertiser, the Peak District's local free newspaper, and is reproduced with Julie's kind permission.

Paul Hudson is unusually 'jammy' in being able to publish under this title with complete justification, and it comes at a time when our locally-produced Bakewell Pudding may be on course for EU protection from impostors.

The author of this new book is a great-great-great grandson of the matriarch of our famous local delicacy, whose authentic recipe is handed down to her descendants to this day. Over many years Paul has unearthed an enviable store of family history linked to far more than the pud. It is his good fortune to boast a family tree with such famous branches as Summers, Hudson and Greaves, notable characters of the day who played major roles in Bakewell and beyond, especially the academic establishments of London. Another descendant runs a flourishing business in Bakewell, while it was the author's father-in-law, Iley James Rogers, who opened the Progress Knitting Factory on Buxton Road in Bakewell during WW1.

Set against the generous size of earlier families (great-grandfather Hudson fathered 10 children, the youngest ones born at the Castle Inn), the existence of a son born 'on the wrong side of the blanket' to the proprietor of the Rutland Arms came as one of many surprises.

With vague childhood memories of hearing tales of family connections with the likes of Sir Joseph Paxton, Sir Humphrey Davy, Michael Faraday and George Stephenson, the author has been able to discover more documentary evidence than he could have dreamed of. His discoveries are revealed against contemporary detail and illustrated with rare images including Ann Summers' marriage certificate of 1800 and her only known photograph, as the famous Mrs Greaves, in later life.

Review by Julie Bunting