Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David - Softcover

Cooper, Artemis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571279600 ISBN 13: 9780571279609

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2011

Synopsis

Elizabeth David was born into a upper-class family and pursued a rebellious and bohemian life as a student of art and then an actress in Paris, before running off with a married man to Greece and then settling in Cairo, where she worked for the British government. After the Second World War, she returned to England, where she was shocked by poor food into writing first articles, then books on Meditteranean cooking. A Book of Mediterranean Food was published in 1950, inspiring a cookery revolution, bringing new flavours and ingredients to the drab, post-war British diet. Over the next few years, David was to become a major influence on British cooking, yet her classic cookery books show little of the colourful personality behind the public persona. Artermis Cooper, in this refreshing biography, reveals an adventurous and uncompromising personality - a woman with a passion for food, life and men. This is the whole story: of her strong friendships, her failed marriage, tempestuous affairs and the greatest love of her life, told with extensive refererence to David's private papers and letters. 'In this wonderful and creative book, Cooper has brought David to life . . . she not only writes like an angel, but has done her research with great skill and obvious enjoyment.' Derek Cooper, Sunday Times 'Engagingly well-written, thoroughly researched and documented. One of the delights of Artemis Cooper's book is that it makes you go back, time and again, to the source. And suddenly I will find that I have whiled away the afternoon re-reading, for the sheer pleasure of it, half of Spices or An Omlette and a Glass of Wine.' Frances Bissell, The Times 'Fluent, engaging and astonishingly readable.' Clarissa Dickson Wright, Mail on Sunday 'Artemis Cooper is skilled and wise enough to handle the contradictory sides of David's character without being either censorious or sensational.' Arabella Boxer, The Times Literary Supplement

About this title

Review

Although Elizabeth David was the very reverse of a recluse, she was famously reluctant to divulge information about herself to her readership, claiming that everything to be said was said in her books. We must take leave to doubt this, in the light of Artemis Cooper's Writing at the Kitchen Table, which follows on the heels of Lisa Chaney's Elizabeth David: A Mediterranean Passion. The more that is revealed about her, the more interesting she becomes. Artemis Cooper is the "authorised" biographer, writing with access to a mass of personal papers but this is not a hagiography. Mrs David, as crisply but sympathetically drawn in these pages, was a fascinating egotist, beautiful with a hard sensuality, generous but capable of furious rages and lasting grudges. She learned a valuable lesson in self-centredness from the quintessentially louche Norman Douglas, who in many ways seems to have been a key influence. Clearly she was not exactly a nice person, although it is encouraging (and not entirely surprising) to discover that she had a really dirty laugh--more of a cackle, in fact, it appears.

The story is well told: The patrician background she flouted (but not too much); the flight from England, greyness and failure; the rackety wartime years spent knocking around the Mediterranean in the company of high Bohemians such as Lawrence Durrell; the marriage of convenience in Cairo that at least gave her the status of a married woman but was soon abandoned; the lovers; the return to London and the start of a dazzling writing career; the fame and the status; the shop; the stroke that affected both palate and libido; the troubled later years. On none of this need she be judged and Artemis Cooper does not. After all, Elizabeth David was right. The best of her is in the writing; and the best of her was the precise, attentive, sensual appreciation of food and cooking. We must remember that above all she was an exquisitely skilful cook, whose influence, though mostly indirect, has been incalculable. It's all the more moving, then, to learn that at her funeral, "among the wreaths and baskets of flowers, and the violets she loved, someone had left a loaf of bread and a bunch of herbs tied up in brown paper." --Robin Davidson

Review

"[Elizabeth David] is to me probably the greatest food writer we have."-- James Beard"It can be said that Elizabeth David's discovery of Italy changed foreverthe serious cooks conception of Italian cuisine." -- Julia Child"Elizabeth David stood for: excellence of ingredients, simplicity of preparation, respect for tradition. She stood against: fuss, overdecoration, pretentiousness.... [She] wrote as she, cooked: with simplicity purity, color, [and] self-effacing authority."-- Julian Barnes, "The New Yorker""At last we have this vivid portrait of Elizabeth David by Artemis Cooper, who not only writes like an angel, but has done her research with great skill and obvious enjoyment."-- "Sunday Times" (London)

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0571279600
• ISBN 13: 9780571279609
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400