Julia Child Queen of the kitchen

At the age of 50, she started a revolution that would change both the culinary and television worlds. As a new documentary charts her extraordinary career, we revisit the life and legacy of Julia Child.

- TIFFANY DUNK

It was far from an auspicious moment. On February 20, 1962, a fledgling public television station in Boston was airing a new instalment of the book review series I’ve Been Reading – and host Professor Albert Duhamel had an unusual guest. She was a virtually unknown cookbook author who had recently co-written Mastering the Art of French Cooking and was embarking upon a promotional tour.

Despite being told she needed no props, Julia Child arrived with a hotplate, whisk and eggs, and in front of the camera showed viewers how to make an omelette “the French way”. While most guests would come and go without making much of a dent in audience consciousness, the middleaged 6ft 3in (190cm) woman with a distinctive quavering voice saw the station flooded with calls and letters asking for more. And in that moment an unexpected star was born who would go on to shift perceptions of what a woman of a certain age could achieve.

Born August 15, 1912, Julia had always stood out rather than blending in. Determined, quick-witted and the oldest of three children in a conservative, upper-middle class family, she was intended by her father John to marry well and settle down into the life of a devoted housewife. But when Julia received a proposal from the scion of the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, one of the most eligible bachelors in town, she shocked everyone by turning him down.“If I had to marry a conservative banker or lawyer, I would have played golf and tennis and I probably would have become an alcoholic,” she would later muse. Instead, after World War II broke out, she defied her family and joined the Office of Strategic Services – journeying to far-flung destinations such as Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and China.