Talk:Elizabeth David

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POV?

David was an eloquent and intelligent but difficult woman who inspired both fear and adoration. She had many, many friends but could be a monster. She suffered a stroke that incredibly led to a loss of the sense of taste and affected her libido. This heralded the troubled final years before her 1992 death at her Chelsea home, where she had lived for forty years.

This paragraph sounds awfully POV to me. Are there any sources for it? Perodicticus 09:37, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The stroke bit checks out: "The little tiny malign blow which wrecked my sense of taste has also put an end (some might think high time too) to any interest I might still have had in sex" - p233, Writing at the Kitchen Table : The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David by Artemis Cooper. Tearlach 21:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Tearlach. I've removed the stuff about her personality until it can be better attested, and phrased the stroke bit more neutrally (it isn't 'incredible' for a stroke to affect the senses; in fact it's pretty common). Perodicticus 09:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do we know when exactly Elizabeth David had her stroke? FB

Yep:

"A life marked by emotional pain was touched by tragedy of a bleaker sort in 1963 when David suffered a stroke. At 49, she was a heavy drinker, but still young to be so afflicted. Although she recovered, in a cruel twist of fate she was left unable to taste salt. Ill-health would dog her for the rest of her life".

Hot in the kitchen, Sunday Herald, 15 January 2006 (and confirmed by official biography via Amazon.com inside-book search). I've put it into the correct place in the chronology; the biography is also explicit that the stroke was of the cerebral hemorrhage variety and likely to be related to alcohol abuse. Tearlach 12:37, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification

Can someone rectify this mistake in the article? I'm not sure what it is meant to say - but I am certain that Elizabeth David did not start WWII.

"She started the War having to flee the German occupation."

Further Edits

Have removed speculative sentence on both ED's ancestry and her Uncle, Roland Gwynne. The Gwynne's owned land in Ireland (see the biography of ED by Lisa Cheney), but there is no evidence to suggest that they were necessarily Irish. Gwynne is also a distinctly Welsh name. Roland Gwynne certainly knew Bodkin Adams well (they were good friends), and he was certainly homosexual, but there is no direct evidence to link them as lovers. Cullen merely suggests the possibility, and such a suggestion is too speculative for Wikipedia.