| Elizabeth David CBE
(December 26, 1913 - May 22,
1992) was a pre-eminent
British cookery writer of the
mid 20th century.
David is
considered responsible for
bringing French and Italian
cooking into the British home
(along with now ubiquitous
items such as olive oil and
the courgette). In a Britain
worn down by post-war
rationing and dull food, she
celebrated the regional and
rural dishes of the
Mediterranean rather than the
fussier food of the gourmands
and aristocrats. David's style
is characterised by terse
descriptions of the recipes
themselves, accompanied by
detailed descriptions of their
context and historical
background, and often laced
with anecdotal asides. She was
often scathing of bad food,
including much of the food of
England that she and her
readers had grown up
with. Born
Elizabeth Gwynne, she was of
mixed English and Irish
ancestry[1], and came from a
rather grand background,
growing up in the 17th century
Sussex manor house, Wootton
Manor with three sisters. Her
parents were Rupert Gwynne,
Conservative MP for
Eastbourne, and the Hon.
Stella Ridley who came from a
distinguished Northumberland
family. Her uncle, Roland
Gwynne, later became Mayor of
Eastbourne and may have been a
lover of suspected serial
killer John Bodkin
Adams. She studied at
the Sorbonne, living with a
French family for two years,
which led to a love of France
and of food. At the age of 19,
she was given her first
cookery book, The Gentle Art
of Cookery by Hilda Leyel, who
wrote of her love with the
food of the East. "If I had
been given a standard Mrs
Beeton instead of Mrs Leyel's
wonderful recipes," she said,
"I would probably never have
learned to cook." Gwynne
had an adventurous early life,
leaving home to become an
actress. She left England in
1939, when she was
twenty-five, and bought a boat
with her married lover Charles
Gibson-Cowan intending to
travel around the
Mediterranean. The onset of
World War II interrupted this
plan, and they had to flee the
German occupation of France.
They left Antibes for Corsica
and then on to Italy where the
boat was impounded, they
having arrived on the day
Italy declared war on Britain.
They were eventually deported
to Greece, then made their way
to the Greek island of Syros
living there for a period,
where she learnt about Greek
food and spent time with high
bohemians such as Lawrence
Durrell. When the Germans
invaded Greece they managed to
flee to Crete where they were
rescued by the British and
evacuated to Egypt, where she
lived firstly in Alexandria
and eventually in Cairo. There
Gwynne started work for the
Ministry of Information, split
from Gibson-Cowan, and
eventually took on a marriage
of convenience to
Lieutenant-Colonel Tony David;
this gave her a measure of
respectability but David was a
man whom she did not
ultimately respect, and their
relationship ended soon after
an eight month posting in
India. She had many lovers in
ensuing years. On her
return to London in 1946,
David began to write cooking
articles and in 1949 the
publisher John Lehmann offered
her a hundred-pound advance
for Mediterranean Food, the
start of a dazzling writing
career. David spent eight
months researching Italian
food in Venice, Tuscany and
Capri. This resulted in
Italian Food in 1954, with
illustrations by Renato
Guttuso, which was famously
described by Evelyn Waugh in
the Sunday Times as one of the
two books which had given him
the most pleasure that
year. Many of the
ingredients were unknown in
England when the books were
first published, and David had
to suggest looking for olive
oil in pharmacies where it was
sold for treating earache.
Within a decade, ingredients
such as eggplants, saffron and
pasta began to appear in
shops, thanks in no small part
to David's books. David gained
fame, respect and high status
and advised many chefs and
companies. In November 1965,
she opened her own shop
devoted to cookery in Pimlico,
London. She wrote articles for
Vogue magazine, one of the
first in the genre of
food-travel. In 1963,
when she was 49, she suffered
a cerebral hemorrhage,
possibly related to her heavy
drinking. Although she
recovered, it affected her
sense of taste and her
libido. David won the
Glenfiddich Writer of the Year
award for English Bread and
Yeast Cookery. She was also
awarded honorary doctorates by
the Universities of Essex and
Bristol, and the award of a
Chevalier de l'Ordre du Merite
Agricole. However, the honour
that most pleased her was
being made a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature in
1982 in recognition of her
skills as a writer. In 1986
she was awarded a
CBE. She died in 1992 at
her Chelsea home, where she
had lived for forty years. |
