Ella Risbridger’s fantasy dinner party: Nancy Mitford, Lord Peter Wimsey, Madhur Jaffrey and Nina Simone

In every partnership, there’s a front of house and a backstage. This is why my flatmate, the playwright Natasha Hodgson, is here two hours before everyone else. I’m holding up outfits and ironing antique linen tablecloths, and she’s looking out to sea and making soothing noises. I love to host, but I can’t do it alone. Someone else can let the guests in, especially since everybody is famous. Tash pours two glasses of extremely nice champagne and opens a big bag of salt ’n’ vinegar chipsticks. I calm down enough to start lighting candles.

We’re in Italy, or possibly on a Greek island, somewhere warm and lost in time, where there is ancient stone, a setting sun and a low moon over a cliffside terrace. Ceramic jugs spill over with peonies in every stage of bloom, trailing ivy and boughs of lilac. I’ve gone full Nancy Mitford on the flowers. I hope she approves when she gets here later, although she might not approve of the blurry line between guests and staff.

Letting other people do the cooking gives me the fear: what will I be doing? So, I will rope in a small army of women to help. The food writer Kate Young, because I love her, and also she’s just written a book about party food. And I’ve invited Nigella Lawson and Laurie Colwin to help her out with the last-minute little touches while ­everybody sits round the kitchen table with a glass of wine.

Because I don’t know any sommeliers, I’ve gone for the next best thing: Lord Peter Wimsey, the aristo sleuth from Dorothy Sayers’ Golden Age detective novels. He possesses both good taste and a large budget. Also, I think he’ll like playing waiter.

I’ve decided to skip courses and go straight to the point: good bread, ripe tomatoes, soft cheese

The nice thing about staffing this party like this is that it establishes the kitchen sub-party, the thing I love best about all social occasions: the core gang who are there before it starts and after it ends. As a reward, Kate is opening us some oysters, just a couple each, probably Irish, with a little shallot vinegar, accompanied by a round of oyster-shell martinis, a Perelló olive in each one.

Whittling down the guest list has been a struggle, not least because I’ve got to think about how everyone will fit together. I’m a big fan of inviting one rogue element: an unexpected guest to shake things up. Tonight’s wild card, sitting next to Nancy Mitford, is Kevin Kwan, the author of Crazy Rich Asians. I don’t know much about him, but a) I like his books and b) I think he’ll bring some good billionaire-adjacent gossip, which will keep Nancy happy.

The other person who I think will bring good gossip is Madhur Jaffrey, the first cookbook author I ever loved, but also a major movie star. I will try to be very cool in her presence, but I do really want her to sign my copy of her Ultimate Curry Bible for my dad. She’s been to a thousand dinners, so I’m hoping she’ll ease the others into not minding that I’ve decided to skip the notion of “courses” and am going straight to the point: platters of good bread — oiled focaccia, rich sourdough and Lebanese manakish — with whipped brown butter.

Pickled peaches, ripe tomatoes. Spilling burrata. Maybe some olives. Maybe some aged, smoky charcuterie and a sweep of soft ripe cheese. Something with handfuls of fresh green herbs. Great tranches of beetroot-cured salmon, paper-fine but so much of it, the colours of the setting sun over the sea. This is observed, with some flourish, by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the father of food ­writing. I’ve put him on Nancy’s other side. They can speak French to each other and say bitchy things about the other guests. She’ll like that, looking around to check we’ve all heard how beautifully she’s speaking, and to whom.

Then my boyfriend, who hates parties but likes to show off with gelato, will bring out his figleaf ice cream, plus this deep rich date cake they used to serve at the LRB bookshop in London in about 2014. He’ll disappear down to the beach, but we’ll propose a toast in his absence with an 1899 Sauternes.

More people turn up later — everyone I’ve ever liked and loved — for music and dancing till late. Nina Simone is here! Nobody can believe it! J S Bach is going hog-wild on the harpsichord! (Did he bring it himself?) There will be dancing. Someone is playing the fiddle (Johann Sebastian, is that you?). There are kids running around, up too late, high on sugar from ­leftover ice cream, with a heap of coats to crash in later, waiting to be carried home. The moon swipes a great sweep of silver across the sea. Too many stars to count. Palomas all round, and a chip van at midnight.

“The Year of Miracles: Recipes About Love + Grief + Growing Things” by Ella Risbridger, is published by Bloomsbury

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