Sunday Times, 4th August 1996.

Better barbecues use British charcoal, and save the environment.

Hold a bag of British charcoal and shake it. The contents will rattle with a pleasing tinkling, metallic sound. Then take a piece in your hands and apply pressure. It will snap crisply open to reveal a silvery sheen. Finally place charcoal on a barbecue and ignite. Use positively no lighter fuel - a match and a single sheet of this newspaper will do. Very soon the pieces will crinkle and crack with urgent culinary intent. You can boil a kettle on it within five minutes.

Now try the rattle test on just about any imported charcoal: the pieces will thud about heavily. Try to snap one and it will probably crumble to dust. Attempt to burn this charcoal - and no cheating with lighter fuel. Be prepared to wait. British charcoal (it accounts for only six per cent of the 50,000 tonnes consumed annually on our barbecues) simply burns better. And so it should. It is produced in exactly the same way, using wood coppiced from the living tree and fired in a kiln from which air is excluded, as the product that fuelled the medieval hearth and powered the Industrial Revolution.

As for imported charcoal, who knows? It can come from pretty well anywhere and anything - the bag is remarkably coy about provenance - but most seems to made from SE Asian mangroves, a depleted eco-system which is felled and not replanted. Then, on the curious assumption that a heavy bag means quality (in contrast, British charcoal is very light), its weight may be boosted with a variety of fillers - sludge, anthracite, even sand. While imported charcoal frequently involves habitat destruction, British charcoal manufacture is a sustainable process beneficial to our woodlands. Coppicing admits sunlight, which promotes ground flora and sylvan wildlife.

Until recently the output of British charcoal, produced in Swallows and Amazons seclusion deep in the woods, was tiny. Now landowners are cranking up output to meet a growing demand. From this summer it is available nationally, through 120 B&Q stores.