Talk at The Garden Museum
Thomas Marks is a writer, art critic and co-founder of Marks|Calil, a cultural consultancy that provides strategic advice to international museums and art businesses.
27 Feb 2024
The Garden Museum is delighted to host Thomas Marks for an evening of insight into the culinary world of Elizabeth David and Benton End.
The cookery writer Elizabeth David was a child when she first met Arthur Lett Haines and Cedric Morris: the artists were friends of her mother and frequent visitors to her childhood home in Sussex. Later, she exchanged recipes with Lett Haines – who ruled the kitchen at Benton End – and acquired art by Morris. The jewel of her small art collection was The Eggs, a painting she bought in 1953 and which later provided the colour illustration for An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (1984), a volume of her collected journalism.
The writer and art critic Thomas Marks has been researching Elizabeth David’s collection of antiquarian cookery books now housed at the Warburg Institute in London. In this talk, Thomas will explore the relationship between David and her artist friends – and the place of food at Benton End and in Morris’s art.
Image: Elizabeth David - Cookery writer. 1969. Photograph: Empics/PA