Aga

The headline smacked me between the eyes. ‘I can’t afford to turn my Aga on this winter,’ a nice writer called Flora Watkins whinged in the Telegraph last weekend (she once wrote a Spectator piece about the sublime awfulness of cockapoos that I wished I’d written myself). The sub-head continued: ‘Our writer’s once cosy Norfolk home is feeling the chill as energy bills rise – how will she and her family cope?’ There was a fetching picture of our tragic protagonist in cardi and layers clutching a mug in front of her Aga and an impressive batterie de cuisine. Watkins had also swathed her pretty neck in the Diana-sheep-jersey scarf (white sheep on red, and one

A whole chicken, not so much roasted as burnt to a crisp. Charred potatoes. Carrots so blackened they were welded to the pan. And don’t even get me started on the Yorkshire puddings, which resembled lumps of coal, still smoking amid the debris. Only once have I failed (catastrophically I might add, and in front of my entire extended family) to cook an edible roast dinner. And I blame the Aga. Long a middle-class status symbol, Agas – in varying shades of duck-egg blue and volcanic red – can be found in country piles, cosy cottages and even the odd city kitchen. Devotees rhapsodise about the cast-iron cookers, which cost upwards

A cooker is not just for cooking. That is the starting point to understanding the Aga. It is impractical, environmentally unfriendly, and expensive. Everyone – including the Aga’s most ardent devotees – knows that. And yet the Aga cooker next year will celebrate its centenary. Despite all the modern appliances that should long ago have rendered it obsolete, these enamel-coated cast-iron behemoths continue to soldier on indefatigably. They are one of the twenty first century’s great survivors. The brand has a glorious history. The Aga cooker was invented by a Nobel Prize-winning Swedish physicist. Having been blinded by an explosion from an earlier invention that went awry, he decided to