I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.
A lot of food criticism has a similar flavor to it, and I'm probably going to write about it in a different way.
A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world.