Food Guide, becoming independent of Lilliput and its successor, The Leader. The Guide'''s first issue came out in 1951; it accepted no advertisements and still relied on volunteers to visit and report on UK restaurants. As well as democratising ordinary eating out, Postgate sought to demystify the aura surrounding wine, and the flowery language widely used to describe wine flavours. His "A Plain Man's Guide To Wine" undoubtedly did much to make Britain more of a wine-drinking nation. In 1965, Postgate wrote an article in Holiday magazine in which he warned readers against Babycham, which "looks like champagne and is served in champagne glasses [but] is made of pears". The company sued for libel, but Postgate was acquitted, and awarded costs. Postgate's distinctly amateur writings on both food and wine, though highly influential in Britain in their time, did not endear him to professionals in the catering and wine trades, who avoided referring to him; however his activities were much appreciated in France, where in 1951 he had been made the first British "Peer of the Jurade of St Emilion". He continued to work as a journalist, mainly on the Co-operative movement's Sunday paper Reynolds' News, and during the 1950s and 1960s published several historical works and a biography of his father-in-law, The Life of George Lansbury. Postgate wrote several mystery novels that drew on his socialist beliefs to set crime, detection and punishment in a broader social and economic context. His most famous novel is Verdict of Twelve (1940), his other novels include Somebody at the Door (1943) and The Ledger Is Kept (1953). (His sister and brother-in-law, the Coles, also became a successful mystery-writing duo.) After the death of H. G. Wells, Postgate edited some revisions of the two-volume Outline of History that Wells had first published in 1920. Death and legacy Raymond Postgate died on 29 March 1971; his wife Daisy committed suicide a month later. Postgate's younger son, Oliver Postgate, also a conscientious objector though in World War II, became a leading creator of children's television programmes in the UK including Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine and The Clangers. Oliver's brother was the microbiologist and writer John Postgate FRS. Notes References Oxford Chronicle, 10 March 1916The Friend, 5 May & 12 May 1916Law Reports, 30 Oct 2 Nov, 4 November 1965, The Times Digital Archive Calder, Angus (1991). The Myth of the Blitz. London: Jonathan Cape. p.