On Celebration Day, I’ll honour my late father with his egg mousse pâté

Thousands of words, hundreds of books and some records even: my family has been published, voraciously, over the years. But Edith’s poetry, Osbert’s autobiography, Sacheverell’s travels, my own scribblings, all pale when set against my father’s greatest triumph. It was in August 1968, featured in the Evening Standard: Francis Sitwell’s egg mousse pâté, supplied via the cookery columnist Monica Mawson. And this was no mere PR frippery, offered up to somehow soften the reputation of one of the City’s great PR men and lunchers; described also in the paper as a member of the International Wine and Food Society. It was a dish he cooked repeatedly over the decades, exclusively, I recall, for lunch parties. He would get mixing in the kitchen and then set the mousse across the dining room table in little pots and friends and family would eat it with crisp melba toast.