That was published in 1951, and since then the burgeoning kitchen design industry has helped ensure that countless people the world over have followed her advice, spending hour upon hour creating the perfect dГ©cor for their kitchen, choosing subtle paint colours, obsessing over light fittings, and eyeing up shiny worktops.ДЄnd this, of course, is why we chose the kitchen as the next expansion pack for the Jacquie Lawson Country Cottage! You've completed your cosy sitting room and perfectly pruned your summer garden, and now you can design your very own immaculate country kitchen. It will be, as it should be, the most comforting and comfortable room in the house.' Having done the best you can by shoes and bed, devote all the time and resources at your disposal to the building up of a fine kitchen. 'Some sensible person once remarked that you spend the whole of your life either in your bed or in your shoes.

In 'French Country Cooking' she wrote, with characteristic elegance and directness: Back in London after the war she started to write about cookery В– and in the following decades she introduced thousands of English people who had never cooked with such exotic ingredients as aubergines, basil, garlic or olive oil, to the delights of Mediterranean cuisine. She then went via Yugoslavia to Greece, but in 1941 was forced to flee the invading Germans and escaped to Cairo.

She had an extraordinary life: rebelling against the expectations of an upper-class English family, she travelled with her lover by boat from England to Antibes and then Sicily, where she was briefly held as a suspected spy. Pride of place on my kitchen bookshelf is reserved for the works of Elizabeth David. Return to top Behind the Scenes Blog Articles Heart of the Home

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