Editing Elizabeth David (section)

===Early years===
[[File:Approaching Wootton Manor - geograph.org.uk - 168663.jpg|thumb|alt=country land, green fields with old house in the background|Grounds of [[Wootton Manor]], David's family home]]
David was born Elizabeth Gwynne, the second of four children, all daughters, of [[Rupert Gwynne|Rupert Sackville Gwynne]] and his wife, the Hon Stella Gwynne, daughter of the [[Matthew White Ridley, 1st Viscount Ridley|1st Viscount Ridley]]. Both parents' families had considerable fortunes, the Gwynnes from engineering and land speculation and the Ridleys from coal mining.<ref>Cooper, pp. 1 and 6</ref> 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.<ref>Chaney, pp. 5–6; and Cooper, p. 2</ref>{{refn|According to the biographer Pamela Cullen, Elizabeth David's uncle [[Roland Gwynne]] submitted "a false entry to [[Burke's Peerage]]" claiming the family was Welsh rather than Irish.<ref>Cullen, p. 623</ref>|group=n}} She and her sisters grew up at [[Wootton Manor]] in [[Sussex]], a seventeenth-century manor house with extensive, early twentieth-century additions by [[Detmar Blow]].<ref>Cooper, p. 8</ref> Her father, despite having a weak heart, insisted on pursuing a demanding political career, becoming [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]] [[Member of parliament#United Kingdom|MP]] for [[Eastbourne (UK Parliament constituency)|Eastbourne]],<ref>"Progress of the General Election". ''The Times'', 16 December 1910, p. 7</ref>{{refn|In consequence of her father's membership of the House of Commons, Elizabeth was baptised in the [[St Mary Undercroft|Crypt Chapel of the Palace of Westminster]] on 22 January 1914. Her godparents were her [[maternal grandmother]]; Winifred Blow, wife of [[Detmar Blow]]; [[Dudley Gordon, 3rd Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair|Dudley Gordon]]; and Algernon Littleton.<ref>"Court Circular". ''The Times'', 23 January 1914, p. 9</ref>|group=n}} and a junior minister in [[Bonar Law]]'s government.<ref>"Two New Ministers". ''The Times'', 16 March 1923, p. 12</ref> Overwork, combined with his vigorous recreational pastimes, chiefly racing, riding, and womanising,<ref>Cooper, p. 5; and Chaney, pp. 8 and 29</ref> brought about his death in 1924, aged 51.<ref>"Obituary—Mr. R. S. Gwynne". ''The Times'', 13 October 1924, p. 16</ref>{{#tag:ref|Cooper, p. 21, states that Rupert Gwynne was 52 at the time of his death, but ''Who's Who'' and ''Alumni Cantabrigienses'' confirm Gwynne's date of birth as 2 August 1873, making him 51 when he died.<ref>[http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U197357 "Gwynne, Rupert Sackville"], ''Who Was Who'', A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2007. Retrieved 26 March 2011 {{subscription}}; and [http://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search-2018.pl?sur=Gwynne&suro=w&fir=Rupert&firo=c&cit=Polegate&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=&sye=&eye=&col=PEMB&maxcount=50 "Gwynne, Rupert Sackville"], A Cambridge Alumni Database, University of Cambridge. Retrieved 18 November 2017</ref>|group=n}}

The widowed Stella Gwynne was a dutiful mother, but her relations with her daughters were distant rather than affectionate.<ref>Chaney, p. 41; and Cooper pp. 14–15</ref> Elizabeth and her sisters, Priscilla, Diana and Felicité were sent away to boarding schools.<ref>Cooper, p. 22</ref> Having been a pupil at Godstowe [[Preparatory school (United Kingdom)|preparatory school]] in [[High Wycombe]], Elizabeth was sent to St Clare's Private School for Ladies, [[Tunbridge Wells]], which she left at the age of sixteen.<ref>Chaney, p. 43</ref> The girls grew up knowing nothing of cooking, which in upper-class households of the time was the exclusive province of the family's [[Cook (domestic worker)|cook]] and her kitchen staff.<ref>Chaney, p. 19</ref>

As a teenager David enjoyed painting, and her mother thought her talent worth developing.<ref>Cooper, p. 28</ref> In 1930 she was sent to Paris, where she studied painting privately and enrolled at the [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]] for a course in French civilisation which covered history, literature and architecture.<ref>Chaney, pp. 43–44</ref> She found her Sorbonne studies arduous and in many ways uninspiring, but they left her with a love of French literature and a fluency in the language that remained with her throughout her life.<ref>Chaney, p. 453</ref> 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).<ref name=David26>David (1979), pp. 26–29; and Chaney, pp. 44–46</ref> 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.&nbsp;... What had stuck was the taste for a kind of food quite ideally unlike anything I had known before."<ref name=David26/> 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.<ref>Cooper, pp. 31–32</ref>