'You can smell the sea or touch the olive branch...'

As legendary cookery writer Elizabeth David gets the 'docu-drama' treatment, Tom Norrington-Davies asks how inspirational she really was

Glancing at January's television schedules, it looks as if the unholy marriage between the words ''drama'' and ''documentary'' is set to go from strength to strength in 2006.

We have already winced over ITV's portrayal of the early lives of Charles and Camilla. Will we now have to cringe at the interpretation of the love life of culinary royalty? Elizabeth David: a life in recipes promises to tell "the compelling story of the most important food writer of the last century... the woman behind the persona... the love affair which drove her to success as a writer" and so on...