Born in Meaux-en-Brie in France, Alexis Soyer escaped the Paris Revolution of 1830 and settled in London at the age of 20. As the ingenious chef de cuisine of the famous Reform Club, he designed their world-famous kitchens in Pall Mall - which he filled with such groundbreaking technology as gas stoves and steam-powered lifts.

An immensely popular figure, he sold a quarter of a million copies of one of his many cookery books. He devised many of the sauces and relishes that would make household names of Mr Crosse and Mr Blackwell, and in the 1840s travelled to Ireland during the devastating potato famine to establish a revolutionary system of state-funded soup kitchens.

Soyer then risked his life by travelling to the Russian peninsula during the Crimean War to reform army catering - saving thousands of soldiers from severe malnutrition. He invented an ingenious campaign stove that was so small it could be carried on the back of a soldier, and then used in the trenches without sending out dangerous smoke signals to the enemy. These stoves were so efficient that they were in regular use as late as the 1980s.

Yet this brilliant man, who during his lifetime was more famous than the men he regularly brushed shoulders with - men such as Thackeray, Disraeli, Dickens and Palmerston - was also a secret bigamist, bankrupt and alcoholic. Despite making several fortunes he died virtually penniless, his personal papers were destroyed, his funeral was a hushed-up affair and today his grave lies neglected and rotting in Kensal Green cemetery.