Alan Davidson

Alan Eaton Davidson CMG (30 March 1924 – 2 December 2003) was a British diplomat and writer best known for his writing and editing on food and gastronomy. After leaving Queen's College, Oxford, in 1948, Davidson joined the British diplomatic service, rising through the ranks to conclude his career as ambassador to Laos, from 1973 to 1975. He retired early and devoted himself to full-time writing about food, encouraged by Elizabeth David and others. He published more than a dozen books between his retirement and 2002, but his magnum opus was The Oxford Companion to Food, a work of more than a million words, which took twenty years to complete and was published to international acclaim in 1999. Life and career Early years Davidson was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, the son of William John Davidson (1899–1959), inspector of taxes, and his wife, Constance, née Eaton (1889–1974). He was brought up in Leeds in the north-east of England, where he attended Leeds Grammar School. His higher education was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as an ordinary seaman and saw wartime and post-war service in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Pacific, ending the war as a commissioned officer. In 1946 he returned to England to complete his interrupted education at Queen's College, Oxford, where he took a double first in classical moderations and Greats in 1948.