Elizabeth David
Encyclopedia
Elizabeth David CBE
(born Elizabeth Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer who, in the mid-20th century, strongly influenced the revitalisation of the art of home cookery with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes.
Born to an upper-class family, David rebelled against social norms of the day. She studied art in Paris, became an actress, and ran off with a married man with whom she sailed in a small boat to Greece. They were nearly trapped by the German invasion of Greece in 1940 but escaped to Egypt where they parted. She then worked for the British government, running a library in Cairo. While there she married, but the marriage was not long lived.
After the war, David returned to England, and, dismayed by the gloom and bad food, wrote a series of articles about Mediterranean food that caught the public imagination. Books on French and Italian cuisine followed, and within ten years David was a major influence on British cooking. She was deeply hostile to second-rate cooking and to bogus substitutes for classic dishes and ingredients. She introduced a generation of British cooks to Mediterranean food hitherto barely known in Britain, such as pasta, Parmesan cheese, olive oil, salami, aubergines, red and green peppers, and courgettes
.
David opened a shop selling kitchen equipment in the 1960s. It continued to trade under her name after she left it in 1973, but her reputation rests on her articles and her books, which have been constantly reprinted.
and the Hon. Stella Ridley, daughter of the 1st Viscount Ridley. Both parents' families had considerable fortunes, the Gwynnes from engineering and land speculation, and the Ridleys from coal mining. Through the two families, David was of English, Scottish and Welsh or Irish descent, and, through an ancestor on her father's side, also Dutch and Sumatra
n. David and her sisters grew up in Wootton Manor
in Sussex
, a Jacobean
manor house with extensive modern additions by Detmar Blow
. Her father, who had a weak heart, nevertheless insisted on pursuing a demanding political career, becoming Conservative
MP for Eastbourne
, and a junior minister in Andrew Bonar Law
's government. Overwork, combined with his vigorous recreational pastimes, chiefly racing, riding and adultery, brought about his death in 1924, aged 51. Elizabeth and her sisters Priscilla, Diana and Felicité, who had little affection from their widowed mother, were sent away to boarding schools.
As a teenager, David enjoyed painting, and her mother thought her talent worth developing. She was sent to Paris in 1930, enrolling at the Sorbonne
for a course in French civilisation which covered history, literature and architecture. She lodged with a Parisian family, whose fanatical devotion to the pleasures of the table she portrayed to comic effect in her French Provincial Cooking (1960). Nevertheless, she acknowledged in retrospect that the experience had been the most valuable part of her time in Paris: "I realized in what way the family had fulfilled their task of instilling French culture into at least one of their British charges. Forgotten were the Sorbonne professors. … What had stuck was the taste for a kind of food quite ideally unlike anything I had known before." Stella Gwynne was not eager for her daughter's early return to England, after qualifying for her Sorbonne diploma, and sent her from Paris to Munich in 1931 to study German.
Back in England, David unenthusiastically went through the social rituals for upper-class young women of presentation at court as a débutante
and the associated dances. The respectable young Englishmen she met at the latter did not appeal to her. She decided that she was not good enough as a painter, and to her mother's displeasure chose instead to become an actress. She joined the Oxford Repertory Company in 1933, and moved to the Open Air Theatre
in Regent's Park
, London the following year. Among her colleagues in the Regent's Park company was an actor nine years her senior, Charles Gibson-Cowan. His disregard for social conventions appealed strongly to her, and she also found him sexually irresistible. His being married did not daunt either of them.
David rented rooms in a large house near the park, spent a generous 21st birthday present on equipping the kitchen, and learned to cook. A gift from her mother of The Gentle Art of Cookery by Hilda Leyel
was her first cookery book. She later wrote, "I wonder if I would have ever learned to cook at all if I had been given a routine Mrs Beeton to learn from, instead of the romantic Mrs Leyel with her rather wild, imagination-catching recipes."
Recognising that she was not going to be a success on the stage, David worked for a while as a junior assistant at the fashion house of Worth, but she found the subservience of retail work irksome. She left in early 1938, and she and Gibson-Cowan bought a boat, just big enough to suffice, with the intention of sailing it to Greece. They crossed the Channel in July 1939 and navigated the boat through the canal system of France. They halted at Marseille
and then, for more than six months, at Antibes
, where David met and became greatly influenced by the ageing writer Norman Douglas
, about whom she later wrote extensively. He inspired her love of the Mediterranean, encouraged her interest in good food, and taught her to "search out the best, insist on it, and reject all that was bogus and second-rate." David and Gibson-Cowan finally left Antibes in May 1940, sailing to Corsica and then to Sicily, where they were suspected of spying and were interned. After 19 days in custody in various parts of Italy, they were allowed to cross into Yugoslavia. They had lost almost everything they possessed – the boat, money, manuscripts, notebooks and David's cherished collection of recipes. With the help of the British Consul in Zagreb
they got to Athens in July 1940. By this time, David was no longer in love with her partner, but remained with him from necessity. Gibson-Cowan got a job teaching English on the island of Syros
, where David learnt to cook with the fresh ingredients available locally. When the Germans invaded Greece in April 1941, the couple managed to leave on a civilian convoy to Egypt.
Able to speak excellent French and good German, David secured a job in the naval cipher
office in Alexandria
. She was quickly rescued from her temporary refugee accommodation, having met an old English friend who had an "absurdly grandiose" flat in the city and invited her to keep house for him. She and Gibson-Cowan amicably went their separate ways, and she moved into the grand flat. She engaged a cook, Kyriacou, a Greek refugee, whose eccentricities (sketched in a chapter of Is There a Nutmeg in the House?) did not prevent him from producing magnificent food: "The flavour of that octopus stew, the rich wine dark sauce and the aroma of mountain herbs was something not easily forgotten." In 1942 she caught an infection that affected her feet. She spent some weeks in hospital and felt obliged to give up her job in the cypher office. David then moved to Cairo, where she was asked to set up and run the Ministry of Information's reference library. The library was open to everyone and was much in demand by journalists and other writers. Her circle of friends in this period included Alan Moorehead
, Freya Stark
, Bernard Spencer
, Patrick Kinross, Olivia Manning
and Lawrence Durrell
. At her tiny flat in the city, she employed Suleiman, a Sudanese suffragi (a cook-housekeeper). She recalled:
In her years in Cairo, David had a number of affairs. She enjoyed them for what they were, but with one exception she did not fall in love. Several of her young men, however, fell in love with her; one of them was Lieutenant-Colonel Tony David. By now in her thirties, David weighed the advantages and disadvantages of remaining a spinster until such time as the ideal husband might appear, and with considerable misgivings she finally accepted Tony David's proposal of marriage. They were married in Cairo on 30 August 1944. Within a year, her husband was posted to India. She duly followed him there, but she found life as the wife of an officer of the British Raj tedious, the social life dull, and the food generally "frustrating". In June 1945, she suffered severe sinusitis and was told by her doctors that the condition would persist if she remained in the summer heat of Delhi. Instead she was advised to go back to England. She did so; her biographer Artemis Cooper
observes, "She had been away from England for six years, and in that time she, and England, had changed beyond recognition."
. I need not go on." She met an old flame in London, and their affair was rekindled, but when Colonel David returned from India in 1947, she immediately resumed the role of wife, and they set up home in Chelsea
, which was to remain her home for the rest of her life. Tony David proved ineffectual in civilian life, unable to find a suitable job, and ran up debts.
Partly to earn some money, and partly from an "agonized craving for the sun", David began writing articles on Mediterranean cookery. Her first efforts were published in 1949 in the British magazine Harper's Bazaar. From the outset, David refused to sell the copyright of her articles, and so she was able to collect and edit them for publication in book form. Even before all the articles had been published, she had assembled them into a typescript volume called A Book of Mediterranean Food and submitted it to a series of publishers, all of whom turned it down. One of them explained that a collection of unconnected recipes needed linking text. David took this advice, but conscious of her inexperience as a writer she kept her own prose short and quoted extensively from established authors whose views on the Mediterranean might carry more weight. In the published volume, the sections are linked by substantial extracts from works by writers including Norman Douglas, Lawrence Durrell, Gertrude Stein
, D. H. Lawrence
, Osbert Sitwell
, Compton Mackenzie
, Arnold Bennett
, Henry James
and Théophile Gautier
. She submitted the revised typescript to John Lehmann
, a publisher more associated with poetry than cookery, but he accepted it, agreeing to an advance payment of £100. A Book of Mediterranean Food was published in 1950.
David placed great importance on the illustration of books, and writers including Cyril Ray
and John Arlott
commented that the drawings by John Minton
added to the attractions of the book. David herself was less convinced by Minton's black and white drawings, but described his jacket design (right) as "stunning". She was especially taken with "his beautiful Mediterranean bay, his tables spread with white cloths and bright fruit" and the way that "pitchers and jugs and bottles of wine could be seen far down the street." Finding the book selling rapidly, Lehmann commissioned David to write, and Minton to illustrate, a sequel. This was French Country Cooking. David gave Minton detailed instructions about some of his drawings, and was more pleased with them in this volume. David dedicated the book to her mother, despite their difficult relationship.
With the earnings from articles commissioned by magazine editors in the wake of the success of the first book, and the advance on the second book, David was able to tour France before completing the manuscript. This was her last holiday with her husband and was not wholly successful. Once French Country Cooking was finished, David decided to live in France for a time, leaving her husband in London. She spent a cold spring and a warm summer in Provence
, from which her fourth book, Summer Cooking was partly drawn. Work on that book was postponed, as David had agreed with Lehmann that her next work should be about Italian food.
Italian Food, with illustrations by Renato Guttuso
, was published in 1954. At the time, many of the ingredients used in the recipes were hardly known in Britain. Looking back in 1963, David wrote, "In Soho
but almost nowhere else, such things as Italian pasta, and Parmesan cheese, olive oil, salame, and occasionally Parma ham were to be had. With southern vegetables such as aubergines, red and green peppers, fennel, the tiny marrows called by the French courgettes and in Italy zucchini, much the same situation prevailed." David was less en rapport with Italy than with Greece and southern France, and found preparing and writing her Italian Food (1954) "uncommonly troublesome". The effort she put into the book was recognised by reviewers. The Times Literary Supplement
wrote, "More than a collection of recipes, this book is in effect a readable and discerning dissertation on Italian food and regional dishes, and their preparation in the English kitchen." The Observer
remarked, "Mrs. David … may be counted among the benefactors of humanity." In The Sunday Times
, Evelyn Waugh
named Italian Food as one of the two books that had given him the most pleasure in that year.
For Summer Cooking, published in 1955, David left Macdonald and signed with the publisher Museum Press. This book, her fourth, reflected her strong belief in eating food in season; she loved "the pleasure of rediscovering each season's vegetables" and thought it "rather dull to eat the same food all year round." Unconstrained by the geographical agendas of her first three books, David wrote about dishes from Britain, India, Mauritius
, Russia, Spain and Turkey, as well as France, Italy and Greece. Soon after the publication of this book, David was wooed away from her regular column in Harper's by Vogue
magazine, which offered her more money and more prominence.
With her increased income from Vogue and The Sunday Times, to which she also contributed regularly, David was able to visit many different areas of France. On these trips she completed her research on the book for which, according to Artemis Cooper in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, she would be best remembered: French Provincial Cooking (1960). The book was dedicated to "P.H, with love". The initials concealed the name of Peter Higgins, with whom David had an affair that lasted throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. Tony David was by now out of her life and had lived in Spain from 1953; they divorced in 1960. Reviews of the new book were as complimentary as those for its predecessors. The Times Literary Supplement wrote, "French Provincial Cooking needs to be read rather than referred to quickly. It discourses at some length the type and origin of the dishes popular in various French regions, as well as the culinary terms, herbs and kitchen equipment used in France. But those who can give the extra time to this book will be well repaid by dishes such as La Bourride de Charles Bérot and Cassoulet Colombié." The Observer said that it was difficult to think of any home that could do without the book and called David "a very special kind of genius".
. Cooper writes, "Her professional career was at its height. She was hailed not only as Britain's foremost writer on food and cookery, but as the woman who had transformed the eating habits of middle-class England." Her books were now reaching a wide public, having been reprinted in paperback by the mass-market Penguin Books
. Her private life was less felicitous. She was greatly distressed at the ending of her affair with Higgins, who fell in love with a younger woman, and for a period she drank too much brandy and resorted too often to sleeping pills. Probably as a result of these factors, and overwork, in 1963, when she was 49, David suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. She recovered, but her sense of taste was temporarily affected, and her confidence was badly shaken.
Together with four business partners, David opened a shop selling kitchen equipment. The partners were spurred on by the recent success of Terence Conran
's Habitat
shops, which sold among much else imported kitchen equipment for which there was evidently a market. Elizabeth David Ltd opened at 46 Bourne Street, Pimlico
, in November 1965.
David was uncompromising in her choice of merchandise; despite its large range of kitchen implements, the shop famously did not stock garlic presses. David wrote an article called "Garlic Presses are Utterly Useless", refused to sell them, and advised customers who demanded them to go elsewhere. Not available elsewhere, by contrast, were booklets by David printed specially for the shop. Some of them were later incorporated into the collections of her essays and articles, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine and Is There a Nutmeg in the House?.
David continued to write articles for magazines. She still included many recipes but increasingly wrote about places – markets, auberges, farms – and people, including profiles of famous chefs and gourmets such as Marcel Boulestin
and Edouard de Pomiane. In her later articles, she expressed strongly-held views on a wide range of subjects; she abominated the word "crispy", demanding to know what it conveyed that "crisp" did not; she confessed to an inability to refill anybody's wineglass until it was empty; she insisted on the traditional form "Welsh rabbit" rather than the modern invention "Welsh rarebit"; she poured scorn on the Guide Michelin's
standards; she deplored "fussy garnish ... distract[ing] from the main flavours"; she inveighed against the ersatz: "anyone depraved enough to invent a dish consisting of a wedge of steam-heated bread spread with tomato paste and a piece of synthetic Cheddar can call it a pizza."
In 1977 David was badly injured in a car accident, from which she took a long time to recover. While she was in hospital, the last book that she completed unaided, English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1977), was published. Its scholarship won high praise, and The Times Literary Supplement suggested that a copy of the book should be given to every marrying couple. When she recovered from the accident, David pressed on with her researches for her next project, Harvest of the Cold Months: the Social History of Ice and Ices. While the elements of this work were being slowly assembled, David published a book of her favourites of her essays and press articles, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (1984). This book was compiled with the help of Jill Norman, who became her literary executor and edited further David works after the author's death.
In the 1980s, David made several visits to California, which she much enjoyed, but her health began to fail. She suffered a succession of falls which resulted in several spells in hospital. The death in 1986 of her younger sister Felicité, who had lived in the top floor of her house for thirty years, was a severe blow to David. In May 1992 she suffered a stroke, followed two days later by another, which was fatal. She died at her Chelsea home on 22 May 1992, aged 78, and was buried on 28 May at the family church of St Peter's, Folkington.
and Bristol
, and the award of a Chevalier de l'Ordre du Mérite 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
.
David has appeared in fictional form at least twice. In 2000 a novel, Lunch with Elizabeth David, by Roger Williams was published by Carroll & Graf, and in 2006, the BBC
broadcast Elizabeth David: A Life In Recipes
, a film starring Catherine McCormack
as Elizabeth David and Greg Wise
as Peter Higgins. David's papers are at the Schlesinger Library
at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
, Harvard University
.
The writer Auberon Waugh
wrote that if asked to name the woman who had brought about the greatest improvement in English life in the 20th century, "my vote would go to Elizabeth David." David's biographer Artemis Cooper concludes her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article thus:
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(born Elizabeth Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer who, in the mid-20th century, strongly influenced the revitalisation of the art of home cookery with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes.
Born to an upper-class family, David rebelled against social norms of the day. She studied art in Paris, became an actress, and ran off with a married man with whom she sailed in a small boat to Greece. They were nearly trapped by the German invasion of Greece in 1940 but escaped to Egypt where they parted. She then worked for the British government, running a library in Cairo. While there she married, but the marriage was not long lived.
After the war, David returned to England, and, dismayed by the gloom and bad food, wrote a series of articles about Mediterranean food that caught the public imagination. Books on French and Italian cuisine followed, and within ten years David was a major influence on British cooking. She was deeply hostile to second-rate cooking and to bogus substitutes for classic dishes and ingredients. She introduced a generation of British cooks to Mediterranean food hitherto barely known in Britain, such as pasta, Parmesan cheese, olive oil, salami, aubergines, red and green peppers, and courgettes
Zucchini
The zucchini is a summer squash which often grows to nearly a meter in length, but which is usually harvested at half that size or less. It is a hybrid of the cucumber. Along with certain other squashes, it belongs to the species Cucurbita pepo. Zucchini can be dark or light green...
.
David opened a shop selling kitchen equipment in the 1960s. It continued to trade under her name after she left it in 1973, but her reputation rests on her articles and her books, which have been constantly reprinted.
Early years
David was born Elizabeth Gwynne, the second of four children, all daughters, of Rupert Sackville GwynneRupert Gwynne
Rupert Sackville Gwynne , was a British Conservative politician. He was Member of Parliament for Eastbourne from 1910 to 1924.-Early years:...
and the Hon. Stella Ridley, daughter of the 1st Viscount Ridley. Both parents' families had considerable fortunes, the Gwynnes from engineering and land speculation, and the Ridleys from coal mining. Through the two families, David was of English, Scottish and Welsh or Irish descent, and, through an ancestor on her father's side, also Dutch and Sumatra
Sumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
n. David and her sisters grew up in Wootton Manor
Wootton Manor
Wootton Manor is a Jacobean country house in Folkington, East Sussex. The current buildings are situated on the site of a mediaeval manor house. Rupert Gwynne and his wife settled in the house after their marriage in 1905, and later commissioned Detmar Blow to restore and extend the house and add...
in Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
, a Jacobean
Jacobean architecture
The Jacobean style is the second phase of Renaissance architecture in England, following the Elizabethan style. It is named after King James I of England, with whose reign it is associated.-Characteristics:...
manor house with extensive modern additions by Detmar Blow
Detmar Blow
Detmar Jellings Blow was a British architect of the early 20th century, who designed principally in the arts and crafts style. His clients belonged chiefly to the British aristocracy, and later he became estates manager to the Duke of Westminster...
. Her father, who had a weak heart, nevertheless insisted on pursuing a demanding political career, becoming Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
MP for Eastbourne
Eastbourne (UK Parliament constituency)
Eastbourne is a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first-past-the-post system of election. Traditionally a safe Conservative seat, Eastbourne became very marginal following the 1990...
, and a junior minister in Andrew Bonar Law
Andrew Bonar Law
Andrew Bonar Law was a British Conservative Party statesman and Prime Minister. Born in the colony of New Brunswick, he is the only British Prime Minister to have been born outside the British Isles...
's government. Overwork, combined with his vigorous recreational pastimes, chiefly racing, riding and adultery, brought about his death in 1924, aged 51. Elizabeth and her sisters Priscilla, Diana and Felicité, who had little affection from their widowed mother, were sent away to boarding schools.
As a teenager, David enjoyed painting, and her mother thought her talent worth developing. She was sent to Paris in 1930, enrolling at the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
for a course in French civilisation which covered history, literature and architecture. She lodged with a Parisian family, whose fanatical devotion to the pleasures of the table she portrayed to comic effect in her French Provincial Cooking (1960). Nevertheless, she acknowledged in retrospect that the experience had been the most valuable part of her time in Paris: "I realized in what way the family had fulfilled their task of instilling French culture into at least one of their British charges. Forgotten were the Sorbonne professors. … What had stuck was the taste for a kind of food quite ideally unlike anything I had known before." Stella Gwynne was not eager for her daughter's early return to England, after qualifying for her Sorbonne diploma, and sent her from Paris to Munich in 1931 to study German.
Back in England, David unenthusiastically went through the social rituals for upper-class young women of presentation at court as a débutante
Debutante
A débutante is a young lady from an aristocratic or upper class family who has reached the age of maturity, and as a new adult, is introduced to society at a formal "début" presentation. It should not be confused with a Debs...
and the associated dances. The respectable young Englishmen she met at the latter did not appeal to her. She decided that she was not good enough as a painter, and to her mother's displeasure chose instead to become an actress. She joined the Oxford Repertory Company in 1933, and moved to the Open Air Theatre
Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park
Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, in the City of Westminster, London, is a permanent venue with an annual sixteen-week summer season. It was founded in 1932 by Sydney Carroll and Robert Atkins.-The theatre:...
in Regent's Park
Regent's Park
Regent's Park is one of the Royal Parks of London. It is in the north-western part of central London, partly in the City of Westminster and partly in the London Borough of Camden...
, London the following year. Among her colleagues in the Regent's Park company was an actor nine years her senior, Charles Gibson-Cowan. His disregard for social conventions appealed strongly to her, and she also found him sexually irresistible. His being married did not daunt either of them.
David rented rooms in a large house near the park, spent a generous 21st birthday present on equipping the kitchen, and learned to cook. A gift from her mother of The Gentle Art of Cookery by Hilda Leyel
Hilda Leyel
Hilda Leyel , who wrote under the name Mrs. C. F. Leyel, was an expert on herbalism and founded the Society of Herbalists in England in 1927, as well as a chain of herbalist stores called the "Culpeper Shops".Leyel is author of a book on herbalism, called Elixirs of Life, among other works...
was her first cookery book. She later wrote, "I wonder if I would have ever learned to cook at all if I had been given a routine Mrs Beeton to learn from, instead of the romantic Mrs Leyel with her rather wild, imagination-catching recipes."
France, Greece and Egypt
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
and then, for more than six months, at Antibes
Antibes
Antibes is a resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.It lies on the Mediterranean in the Côte d'Azur, located between Cannes and Nice. The town of Juan-les-Pins is within the commune of Antibes...
, where David met and became greatly influenced by the ageing writer Norman Douglas
Norman Douglas
George Norman Douglas was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind.-Life:Norman Douglas was born in Thüringen, Austria . His mother was Vanda von Poellnitz...
, about whom she later wrote extensively. He inspired her love of the Mediterranean, encouraged her interest in good food, and taught her to "search out the best, insist on it, and reject all that was bogus and second-rate." David and Gibson-Cowan finally left Antibes in May 1940, sailing to Corsica and then to Sicily, where they were suspected of spying and were interned. After 19 days in custody in various parts of Italy, they were allowed to cross into Yugoslavia. They had lost almost everything they possessed – the boat, money, manuscripts, notebooks and David's cherished collection of recipes. With the help of the British Consul in Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
they got to Athens in July 1940. By this time, David was no longer in love with her partner, but remained with him from necessity. Gibson-Cowan got a job teaching English on the island of Syros
Syros
Syros , or Siros or Syra is a Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea. It is located south-east of Athens. The area of the island is . The largest towns are Ermoupoli, Ano Syros, and Vari. Ermoupoli is the capital of the island and the Cyclades...
, where David learnt to cook with the fresh ingredients available locally. When the Germans invaded Greece in April 1941, the couple managed to leave on a civilian convoy to Egypt.
Able to speak excellent French and good German, David secured a job in the naval cipher
Cipher
In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption — a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. In non-technical usage, a “cipher” is the same thing as a “code”; however, the concepts...
office in Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
. She was quickly rescued from her temporary refugee accommodation, having met an old English friend who had an "absurdly grandiose" flat in the city and invited her to keep house for him. She and Gibson-Cowan amicably went their separate ways, and she moved into the grand flat. She engaged a cook, Kyriacou, a Greek refugee, whose eccentricities (sketched in a chapter of Is There a Nutmeg in the House?) did not prevent him from producing magnificent food: "The flavour of that octopus stew, the rich wine dark sauce and the aroma of mountain herbs was something not easily forgotten." In 1942 she caught an infection that affected her feet. She spent some weeks in hospital and felt obliged to give up her job in the cypher office. David then moved to Cairo, where she was asked to set up and run the Ministry of Information's reference library. The library was open to everyone and was much in demand by journalists and other writers. Her circle of friends in this period included Alan Moorehead
Alan Moorehead
Alan McCrae Moorehead OBE was a war correspondent and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, The White Nile and The Blue Nile . Australian-born, he lived in England, and Italy, from 1937.-Biography:Alan Moorehead was born in...
, Freya Stark
Freya Stark
Dame Freya Madeline Stark, Mrs. Perowne, DBE was a British explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels, which were mainly in Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan....
, Bernard Spencer
Bernard Spencer
Charles Bernard Spencer was an English poet, translator, and editor.He was born in Madras, India and educated at Marlborough College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Marlborough he knew John Betjeman and Louis MacNeice; at Oxford Stephen Spender, and he also came across W. H. Auden. He...
, Patrick Kinross, Olivia Manning
Olivia Manning
Olivia Mary Manning CBE was a British novelist, poet, writer and reviewer. Her fiction and non-fiction, frequently detailing journeys and personal odysseys, were principally set in England, Ireland, Europe and the Middle East. She often wrote from her personal experience, though her books also...
and Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
. At her tiny flat in the city, she employed Suleiman, a Sudanese suffragi (a cook-housekeeper). She recalled:
In her years in Cairo, David had a number of affairs. She enjoyed them for what they were, but with one exception she did not fall in love. Several of her young men, however, fell in love with her; one of them was Lieutenant-Colonel Tony David. By now in her thirties, David weighed the advantages and disadvantages of remaining a spinster until such time as the ideal husband might appear, and with considerable misgivings she finally accepted Tony David's proposal of marriage. They were married in Cairo on 30 August 1944. Within a year, her husband was posted to India. She duly followed him there, but she found life as the wife of an officer of the British Raj tedious, the social life dull, and the food generally "frustrating". In June 1945, she suffered severe sinusitis and was told by her doctors that the condition would persist if she remained in the summer heat of Delhi. Instead she was advised to go back to England. She did so; her biographer Artemis Cooper
Artemis Cooper
The Hon. Alice Clare Antonia Opportune Cooper Beevor is a British writer known as Artemis Cooper.Known as Artemis, a nickname which honours her paternal grandmother, she is the only daughter of the 2nd Viscount Norwich and his first wife, the former Anne Clifford, and a granddaughter of the...
observes, "She had been away from England for six years, and in that time she, and England, had changed beyond recognition."
Post-war England
Returning after her years of Mediterranean warmth and access to a profusion of fresh ingredients, David found her native country in the post-war period grey and daunting. She encountered terrible food: "There was flour and water soup seasoned solely with pepper; bread and gristle rissoles; dehydrated onions and carrots; corned beef toad in the holeToad in the hole
Toad in the hole is a traditional English dish consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with vegetables and onion gravy....
. I need not go on." She met an old flame in London, and their affair was rekindled, but when Colonel David returned from India in 1947, she immediately resumed the role of wife, and they set up home in Chelsea
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area of West London, England, bounded to the south by the River Thames, where its frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above...
, which was to remain her home for the rest of her life. Tony David proved ineffectual in civilian life, unable to find a suitable job, and ran up debts.
Partly to earn some money, and partly from an "agonized craving for the sun", David began writing articles on Mediterranean cookery. Her first efforts were published in 1949 in the British magazine Harper's Bazaar. From the outset, David refused to sell the copyright of her articles, and so she was able to collect and edit them for publication in book form. Even before all the articles had been published, she had assembled them into a typescript volume called A Book of Mediterranean Food and submitted it to a series of publishers, all of whom turned it down. One of them explained that a collection of unconnected recipes needed linking text. David took this advice, but conscious of her inexperience as a writer she kept her own prose short and quoted extensively from established authors whose views on the Mediterranean might carry more weight. In the published volume, the sections are linked by substantial extracts from works by writers including Norman Douglas, Lawrence Durrell, Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
, D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, Osbert Sitwell
Osbert Sitwell
Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet, was an English writer. His elder sister was Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell and his younger brother was Sir Sacheverell Sitwell; like them he devoted his life to art and literature....
, Compton Mackenzie
Compton Mackenzie
Sir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...
, Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett
- Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
, Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
and Théophile Gautier
Théophile Gautier
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....
. She submitted the revised typescript to John Lehmann
John Lehmann
Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann was an English poet and man of letters, and one of the foremost literary editors of the twentieth century, founding the periodicals New Writing and The London Magazine.The fourth child of journalist Rudolph Lehmann, and brother of Helen Lehmann, novelist Rosamond...
, a publisher more associated with poetry than cookery, but he accepted it, agreeing to an advance payment of £100. A Book of Mediterranean Food was published in 1950.
David placed great importance on the illustration of books, and writers including Cyril Ray
Cyril Ray
Cyril Ray was an English author and journalist. After a spell as a war reporter, and then a foreign correspondent he became best known for writing about food and, especially, wine...
and John Arlott
John Arlott
Leslie Thomas John Arlott OBE was an English journalist, author and cricket commentator for the BBC's Test Match Special. He was also a poet, wine connoisseur and former police officer in Hampshire...
commented that the drawings by John Minton
John Minton (artist)
Francis John Minton was an English painter, illustrator, stage designer and teacher. After studying in France, he became a teacher in London, and at the same time maintained a consistently large output of works...
added to the attractions of the book. David herself was less convinced by Minton's black and white drawings, but described his jacket design (right) as "stunning". She was especially taken with "his beautiful Mediterranean bay, his tables spread with white cloths and bright fruit" and the way that "pitchers and jugs and bottles of wine could be seen far down the street." Finding the book selling rapidly, Lehmann commissioned David to write, and Minton to illustrate, a sequel. This was French Country Cooking. David gave Minton detailed instructions about some of his drawings, and was more pleased with them in this volume. David dedicated the book to her mother, despite their difficult relationship.
With the earnings from articles commissioned by magazine editors in the wake of the success of the first book, and the advance on the second book, David was able to tour France before completing the manuscript. This was her last holiday with her husband and was not wholly successful. Once French Country Cooking was finished, David decided to live in France for a time, leaving her husband in London. She spent a cold spring and a warm summer in Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
, from which her fourth book, Summer Cooking was partly drawn. Work on that book was postponed, as David had agreed with Lehmann that her next work should be about Italian food.
Italian, French and other cuisines
Since the brief and unpleasant time there with Charles Gibson-Cowan in 1940, David had been in Italy only once, to visit Norman Douglas in Capri in 1951. She returned to Italy in March 1952 and spent nearly a year travelling around the country collecting material. By the time she completed the book, Lehmann's publishing firm had been closed down by its parent company, and David found herself under contract to Macdonald, another imprint within the same group. She intensely disliked the company and wrote a most unflattering portrait of it in a 1985 article.Italian Food, with illustrations by Renato Guttuso
Renato Guttuso
Renato Guttuso was an Italian painter.His best-known paintings include Flight from Etna , Crucifixion and La Vucciria . Guttuso also designed for the theatre and did illustrations for books...
, was published in 1954. At the time, many of the ingredients used in the recipes were hardly known in Britain. Looking back in 1963, David wrote, "In Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
but almost nowhere else, such things as Italian pasta, and Parmesan cheese, olive oil, salame, and occasionally Parma ham were to be had. With southern vegetables such as aubergines, red and green peppers, fennel, the tiny marrows called by the French courgettes and in Italy zucchini, much the same situation prevailed." David was less en rapport with Italy than with Greece and southern France, and found preparing and writing her Italian Food (1954) "uncommonly troublesome". The effort she put into the book was recognised by reviewers. The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
wrote, "More than a collection of recipes, this book is in effect a readable and discerning dissertation on Italian food and regional dishes, and their preparation in the English kitchen." The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
remarked, "Mrs. David … may be counted among the benefactors of humanity." In The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
named Italian Food as one of the two books that had given him the most pleasure in that year.
For Summer Cooking, published in 1955, David left Macdonald and signed with the publisher Museum Press. This book, her fourth, reflected her strong belief in eating food in season; she loved "the pleasure of rediscovering each season's vegetables" and thought it "rather dull to eat the same food all year round." Unconstrained by the geographical agendas of her first three books, David wrote about dishes from Britain, India, Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...
, Russia, Spain and Turkey, as well as France, Italy and Greece. Soon after the publication of this book, David was wooed away from her regular column in Harper's by Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
magazine, which offered her more money and more prominence.
With her increased income from Vogue and The Sunday Times, to which she also contributed regularly, David was able to visit many different areas of France. On these trips she completed her research on the book for which, according to Artemis Cooper in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, she would be best remembered: French Provincial Cooking (1960). The book was dedicated to "P.H, with love". The initials concealed the name of Peter Higgins, with whom David had an affair that lasted throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. Tony David was by now out of her life and had lived in Spain from 1953; they divorced in 1960. Reviews of the new book were as complimentary as those for its predecessors. The Times Literary Supplement wrote, "French Provincial Cooking needs to be read rather than referred to quickly. It discourses at some length the type and origin of the dishes popular in various French regions, as well as the culinary terms, herbs and kitchen equipment used in France. But those who can give the extra time to this book will be well repaid by dishes such as La Bourride de Charles Bérot and Cassoulet Colombié." The Observer said that it was difficult to think of any home that could do without the book and called David "a very special kind of genius".
1960s
In 1960, David stopped writing for The Sunday Times, where she was unhappy about editorial interference with her copy, and joined the weekly publication The SpectatorThe Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
. Cooper writes, "Her professional career was at its height. She was hailed not only as Britain's foremost writer on food and cookery, but as the woman who had transformed the eating habits of middle-class England." Her books were now reaching a wide public, having been reprinted in paperback by the mass-market Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
. Her private life was less felicitous. She was greatly distressed at the ending of her affair with Higgins, who fell in love with a younger woman, and for a period she drank too much brandy and resorted too often to sleeping pills. Probably as a result of these factors, and overwork, in 1963, when she was 49, David suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. She recovered, but her sense of taste was temporarily affected, and her confidence was badly shaken.
Together with four business partners, David opened a shop selling kitchen equipment. The partners were spurred on by the recent success of Terence Conran
Terence Conran
Sir Terence Orby Conran, FCSD, is an English designer, restaurateur, retailer and writer.-Early life and education:Terence Conran was born in Kingston upon Thames, the son of Christina Mabel and South African-born Gerard Rupert Conran, a businessman who owned a rubber importation company in East...
's Habitat
Habitat (retailer)
Habitat Retail Ltd. is a retailer of household furnishings in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, and has franchised outlets in other countries. Founded in 1964 by Terence Conran, it was sold by the IKANO Group, owned by the Kamprad family, in December 2009 to Hilco, a restructuring...
shops, which sold among much else imported kitchen equipment for which there was evidently a market. Elizabeth David Ltd opened at 46 Bourne Street, Pimlico
Pimlico
Pimlico is a small area of central London in the City of Westminster. Like Belgravia, to which it was built as a southern extension, Pimlico is known for its grand garden squares and impressive Regency architecture....
, in November 1965.
David was uncompromising in her choice of merchandise; despite its large range of kitchen implements, the shop famously did not stock garlic presses. David wrote an article called "Garlic Presses are Utterly Useless", refused to sell them, and advised customers who demanded them to go elsewhere. Not available elsewhere, by contrast, were booklets by David printed specially for the shop. Some of them were later incorporated into the collections of her essays and articles, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine and Is There a Nutmeg in the House?.
David continued to write articles for magazines. She still included many recipes but increasingly wrote about places – markets, auberges, farms – and people, including profiles of famous chefs and gourmets such as Marcel Boulestin
Marcel Boulestin
Xavier Marcel Boulestin was a French chef, restaurateur, and the author of cookery books that popularised French cuisine in the English-speaking world....
and Edouard de Pomiane. In her later articles, she expressed strongly-held views on a wide range of subjects; she abominated the word "crispy", demanding to know what it conveyed that "crisp" did not; she confessed to an inability to refill anybody's wineglass until it was empty; she insisted on the traditional form "Welsh rabbit" rather than the modern invention "Welsh rarebit"; she poured scorn on the Guide Michelin's
Michelin Guide
The Michelin Guide is a series of annual guide books published by Michelin for over a dozen countries. The term normally refers to the Michelin Red Guide, the oldest and best-known European hotel and restaurant guide, which awards the Michelin stars...
standards; she deplored "fussy garnish ... distract[ing] from the main flavours"; she inveighed against the ersatz: "anyone depraved enough to invent a dish consisting of a wedge of steam-heated bread spread with tomato paste and a piece of synthetic Cheddar can call it a pizza."
Later years
While running the shop, David wrote another full-length book, Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen (1970), the first of a projected series on English cookery. The shop was never profitable, but David would not lower her standards in search of a commercial return. Gradually her partners found her approach unsustainable, and in 1973 she left the business. To her annoyance, the shop continued to trade under her name, as it was legally entitled to do.In 1977 David was badly injured in a car accident, from which she took a long time to recover. While she was in hospital, the last book that she completed unaided, English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1977), was published. Its scholarship won high praise, and The Times Literary Supplement suggested that a copy of the book should be given to every marrying couple. When she recovered from the accident, David pressed on with her researches for her next project, Harvest of the Cold Months: the Social History of Ice and Ices. While the elements of this work were being slowly assembled, David published a book of her favourites of her essays and press articles, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (1984). This book was compiled with the help of Jill Norman, who became her literary executor and edited further David works after the author's death.
In the 1980s, David made several visits to California, which she much enjoyed, but her health began to fail. She suffered a succession of falls which resulted in several spells in hospital. The death in 1986 of her younger sister Felicité, who had lived in the top floor of her house for thirty years, was a severe blow to David. In May 1992 she suffered a stroke, followed two days later by another, which was fatal. She died at her Chelsea home on 22 May 1992, aged 78, and was buried on 28 May at the family church of St Peter's, Folkington.
Awards and legacy
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 EssexUniversity of Essex
The University of Essex is a British campus university whose original and largest campus is near the town of Colchester, England. Established in 1963 and receiving its Royal Charter in 1965...
and Bristol
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
, and the award of a Chevalier de l'Ordre du Mérite Agricole
Mérite agricole
The Ordre National du Mérite Agricole is an order of merit established in France on 7 July 1883 by Minister of Agriculture Jules Méline to reward services to agriculture...
. However, the honour that most pleased her was being made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Royal Society of Literature
The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...
in 1982 in recognition of her skills as a writer. In 1986 she was awarded a CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
.
David has appeared in fictional form at least twice. In 2000 a novel, Lunch with Elizabeth David, by Roger Williams was published by Carroll & Graf, and in 2006, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
broadcast Elizabeth David: A Life In Recipes
Elizabeth David: A Life In Recipes
Elizabeth David: A Life In Recipes is a 2006 British drama television film directed by James Kent and starring Catherine McCormack, Greg Wise and Karl Johnson. It is a depiction of the life of the cookery writer Elizabeth David...
, a film starring Catherine McCormack
Catherine McCormack
Catherine McCormack is an English actress, known for her stage acting as well as her screen performances in films such as Braveheart, Spy Game and Dangerous Beauty.- Early life :...
as Elizabeth David and Greg Wise
Greg Wise
Greg Wise is an English actor and producer. He has appeared in many British television works, as well as several feature films .- Early life :...
as Peter Higgins. David's papers are at the Schlesinger Library
Schlesinger Library
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is a research library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. According to Nancy F...
at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard is an educational institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of the semiautonomous components of Harvard University. It is heir to the name and buildings of Radcliffe College, but unlike that historical institution, its focus is directed...
, Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
The writer Auberon Waugh
Auberon Waugh
Auberon Alexander Waugh was a British author and journalist, son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was known to his family and friends as Bron Waugh.-Life and career:...
wrote that if asked to name the woman who had brought about the greatest improvement in English life in the 20th century, "my vote would go to Elizabeth David." David's biographer Artemis Cooper concludes her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article thus:
Books
- 1950: Mediterranean Food, decorated by John MintonJohn Minton (artist)Francis John Minton was an English painter, illustrator, stage designer and teacher. After studying in France, he became a teacher in London, and at the same time maintained a consistently large output of works...
. London: John Lehmann OCLC 1363273 - 1951: French Country Cooking, decorated by John Minton. London: John Lehmann OCLC 38915667
- 1954: Italian Food, illustrated by Renato GuttusoRenato GuttusoRenato Guttuso was an Italian painter.His best-known paintings include Flight from Etna , Crucifixion and La Vucciria . Guttuso also designed for the theatre and did illustrations for books...
. London: Macdonald OCLC 38915667 - 1955: Summer Cooking, illustrated by Adrian Daintrey. London: Museum Press OCLC 6439374
- 1960: French Provincial Cooking, illustrated by Juliet Renny. London: Michael Joseph OCLC 559285062
- 1970: Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen. Harmondsworth: Penguin ISBN 0140461639
- 1977: English Bread and Yeast Cookery, with illustrations by Wendy Jones. Harmondsworth: Penguin ISBN 0140462996
- 1984: An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. Jill Norman (ed.) London: Robert Hale ISBN 0709020473 (selection of previously published articles)
Posthumous publications
- 1994: Harvest of the Cold Months: the social history of ice and ices. London: Michael Joseph ISBN 0718137035
- 1997: South Wind Through the Kitchen: the best of Elizabeth David. Jill Norman (ed.) London Michael Joseph ISBN 0718141687
- 2000: Is There a Nutmeg in the House?; Jill Norman (ed.) London: Michael Joseph ISBN 0718137035
- 2003: Elizabeth David's Christmas; Jill Norman (ed.) London: Michael Joseph ISBN 0718146700
- 2010: At Elizabeth David's Table: her very best everyday recipes. Jill Norman (ed.) Foreword by Jamie OliverJamie OliverJames "Jamie" Trevor Oliver, MBE , sometimes known as The Naked Chef, is an English chef, restaurateur and media personality, known for his food-focused television shows, cookbooks and more recently his campaign against the use of processed foods in national schools...
, Johnny GreyJohnny GreyJohnny Grey is an architect, designer and author.-Background:Grey trained as an architect at the London Architectural Association School of Architecture. After graduating in 1977, he set up a design studio and furniture workshop...
, Rose GrayRose GrayRose Gray, MBE was a British chef and cookery writer, who set up The River Café in 1987. She won a Michelin star for this in 1998. It was here that the talents of Jamie Oliver were first spotted...
, Sally Clarke, Simon HopkinsonSimon HopkinsonSimon Charles Hopkinson is a food writer, critic and former chef. He is considered to be one of the best cookery writers working today.- Early career :...
, Hugh Fearnley-WhittingstallHugh Fearnley-WhittingstallHugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a British celebrity chef, television personality, journalist, food writer and "real food" campaigner, known for his back-to-basics philosophy...
. London: Michael Joseph ISBN 9780718154752