Jay Rayner
Jay Rayner (born 14 September 1966) is a British journalist, writer, broadcaster and food critic.
Life and career
Rayner is the younger son of journalist Claire Rayner and Desmond Rayner. His family is Jewish. He was brought up in the Sudbury Hill area of Harrow and attended the independent The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School. He joined The Observer newspaper after graduating from Leeds University in 1988, where he was editor of the student newspaper. As of 2014 he is restaurant critic of The Observer. He has written for a wide range of British newspapers and magazines, including GQ, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, the New Statesman and Granta. In 1992 he was named Young Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards.
His first novel, The Marble Kiss, published in 1994, was shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel Award and his second, Day of Atonement (1998), was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize for Fiction. His first non-fiction book, Stardust Falling, was published in 2002 and was followed by his third novel, The Apologist, published in the US as Eating Crow, in 2004.