Winner of a Somerset Maugham Award 1997 A stunning novel of political life, betrayal and passion, which lifts the lid on vice within the Palace of Westminster…and cost Hensher his job as a House of Commons clerk.

‘Sharp and funny…a beautifully polished performance.’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Sex, politics and death are the classic themes of Hensher's original novel. Set in Parliament at the time of the fall of Margaret Thatcher, it follows the disintegration of the family of a Commons clerk…Hensher is both sharp and melancholic. Here he is on Thatcher: “When she walked she seemed to extinguish a cigarette beneath every pace; in her walk, it could be seen that she was in the right.”’ Observer ‘Incisive characterisation, first-class dialogue…Set amid the wigs and gowns of parliamentary officialdom, Philip Hensher’s second novel exposes the hidden tensions in apparently banal lives.’ Sunday Telegraph

• This handsome new edition of Kitchen Venom forms part of Flamingo’s revitalisation of Philip Hensher’s critically-acclaimed, award-winning backlist. • Publication timed to ride on the coat-tails of Flamingo’s biggest paperback promotion of the Spring: The Mulberry Empire, Hensher’s vast, rich novel of the British Army’s tragic intervention in Afghanistan in the 1830s. • Flamingo will do for Hensher what it has done for writers such as Isabel Allende and Douglas Coupland over the last few years – provide the inventive, enterprising marketing that allows the people who would love his work but have not yet heard of him to think they really ought to buy this book. Competition: The Alan Clark Diaries, Francis Wheen, Matthew Parris, Simon Hoggart, Jeremy Paxman