Julia Childs was born Julia Carolyn McWilliams on Thursday the 15th of August 1912 in Pasadena, California to parents John McWilliams Jr and Julia Carolyn (Caro) Weston. Her father was a land manager and graduate from Princeton University and her mother was a paper company heiress. Julia was the oldest of three children, she had a brother John McWilliams III, and a younger sister Dorothy Cousins.

In 1912, Pasadena, California was a charming and burgeoning city known for its picturesque landscapes, cultural attractions, and emerging community. Pasadena's natural beauty was one of its main attractions.

The city was nestled at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains and was known for its stunning views, mild climate, and lush gardens. The Rose Bowl, which would become an iconic venue, was constructed ten years later in 1922. Pasadena was characterized by a mix of architectural styles.

Many homes and buildings showcased the Arts and Crafts movement, which emphasized craftsmanship, natural materials, and attention to detail. Pasadena in 1912 was a city in transition, holding onto its small-town charm while embracing the opportunities and changes of the early 20th century. The city's future as a cultural, scientific, and architectural destination was taking shape, setting the stage for the vibrant and diverse city it would become in the decades to come.

Julia attended school in Pasadena until high school where she was sent to Katherine Branson School in Ross California which was a boarding school. Julia was taller than most of the students at the school at six foot two inches or 1.88m tall. She loved to play tennis, golf, and basketball and continued this passion for sports into her time at Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts where she graduated from in 1934 with a major in history. At college Julia wrote in her diary “I am sadly an ordinary person with talents I do not use”.

**New York where Julia moved after college**

With aspirations of being a novelist or magazine writer Julia after college moved to New York City to work as a copywriter for an advertising department for a short period.

In 1942 Julia joined the Office of Strategic Services or the OSS as it’s known. She joined the OSS after finding out that she was too tall to enlist in the WACs or the WAVES (Women’s Army Corps or US Navy). So she started out as a typist at the OSS headquarters in Washington DC and then worked her way up quickly to the position of top secret researcher working for the head of the OSS General William J Donovan.

Julia typed over 10,000 names onto white note cards to keep track of officers in the Secret Intelligence division. Remarkably for a year she worked with the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment section as an assistant to developers and worked with them to develop a shark repellent that was needed to ensure that sharks couldn’t explode mines that were placed in the sea to target German U boats. This was in fact one of Julia’s first forays into cooking as she worked on a solution as an experiment cooking various concoctions to resell the sharks. This repellent is still used today.

In 1944 Julia was posted to Kandy in Ceylon which is now what we know as Sri Lanka. She would register and catalog a great volume of highly classified communications for the OSS’s stations around Asia. Then she would be posted after this time in Sri Lanka to Kunming in China and receive the Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service from the head of the registry of the OSS Secretariat. It was this time in China that started Julia’s interest in food and cooking. She was quoted as saying that is when I became interested in food. I just loved Chinese food. How life would have differed for so many of us if she’d created the Mastering the Art of Chinese Food instead. She’d told the Wall Street Journal that from her time in China, she found that Chinese food was wonderful and that she ate out as often as she could.

The time in Kandy was pivotal in her life as this is where she met her future husband Paul Cushing Child. Paul was born on Wednesday the 15th of January in 1902 in Montclair New Jersey. Paul lived in Paris as an artist and poet and loved the Parisian culture. He joined the United States Foreign Service and met Julia in Ceylon.

Upon meeting Julia, Paul wrote to his twin brother Charlie that Julia was wildly emotional and an extremely sloppy thinker who was unable to sustain ideas for long. In fact, Julia described meeting Paul that she was disappointed in him and that he had an unbecoming blond mustache and a long unbecoming nose.

But the two fell in love and in the summer of 1946, they traveled accompanied by 8 bottles of whisky, a bottle of gin, and a bottle of mixed martinis. Paul later wrote to Charlie saying that Julia never puts on an act or creates a scene that she likes to eat and uses her senses and has an unusually keen nose. He also wrote that she washes his shirts and is quite a dame.

On Sunday the 1st of September 1946 Paul and Julia married in Lumberville Pennsylvania. They then moved to Washington DC and two years later moved to Paris when the state department assigned Paul there as an exhibits office with the United States Information Agency.

Julia spent her childhood growing up with a cook in the family preparing her meals. She didn’t watch or learn from them anything to do with food or cooking and in actual fact never started to cook until she met her husband-to-be Paul who grew up in a family that was completely the opposite of Julias and some would say was obsessed with food and cooking.

Paul’s job working at the State Department then saw him and Julia being posted to France. En route to Paris, Paul took Julia to some of his favorite places in France.

The move to France changed Julia and she described it as a culinary revelation. She repeated to many people throughout her life her first meal in France which was at La Couronne in Rouen. This meal she said consisted of Oysters, Sole Meunière, and a fine wine. It was as she said an opening up of the soul and spirit for me.

La Couronne is still open in Rouen, translated as the crown the restaurant has been in business since 1345 and is one of the oldest inns in France. It’s located in place du vieux-marche in the center of town. Rouen is in Normandy and has a vast history going back to 900 BC. One story associated with the restaurant is that in 1431 Raoul Baudry a restorer could see from the windows of the tavern the torture of Joan of Arc.

In 1951 Julia graduated from Le Cordon Bleu Paris and later furthered that study with private lessons from some of the chefs at the school such as Max Bugnard.

Between classes, she studied French and roamed the open-air markets, talking with fishmongers, bakers, and fruit sellers. She and Paul scoured the neighborhoods of Paris for friendly bistros, and under her husband’s patient tutelage, Julia’s palette grew more and more sophisticated.

After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu Julia joined the women’s cooking club Le Cercle des Gourmettes where she met Simone (Simca) Beck. Simone was writing a French cookbook with her friend Louisette Bertholle for Americans. When she met Julia she proposed that if Julia worked with them on the book this would help to make the book more appealing to an American audience. Later that year Julia, Simone, and Louisette would teach cooking classes to American women in Julia’s Parisian kitchen calling the school L’Ecole des trots gourmands (The School of the Three Food Lovers).

For the next decade, as Julia moved around Europe and finally to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the three researched and repeatedly tested recipes. Child translated the French recipes into English, making the recipes detailed, interesting, and practical. Paul and Julia were posted from Paris to Marseilles to Bonn to Oslo and on to Washington, they kept up a furious correspondence, typing hundreds of letters with six carbon copies. Julia kept meticulous notes and spent months perfecting recipes for one ingredient. She made so many egg dishes that she finally wrote to Simone, “I’ve just poached two more eggs and thrown them down the toilet.”

Spending time traveling around Europe Julia and Paul bought some land and built a home in Provence France. The property was part of her co-author Simone’s family property. They named the home La Pitchoune meaning The Little One but over time the property became known as La Peetch.

When Simone Beck died in 1991 at the age of 87, Julia relinquished the property. In June 1992 Julia, her niece, and a close friend returned to the property for a month-long stay and then turned the keys over to Jean Fischbacher’s sister. Jean Fishbacher was Simone Becks’ husband. You can now do cooking classes there with the current owners. Of course that would be before or after you come visit me here in Montmorillon for a class.

**Me the Australian Julia Child reading Mastering the Art**

Julia’s career as a French cooking expert so to speak started when the three authors signed a contract with publisher Houghton Mifflin. This manuscript was rejected by Houghton as they thought it seemed too much like an encyclopedia. The publishes Alfred A Knopf would finally publish Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961 as a 726-page book that would become a best seller and receive critical acclaim and be an integral influence in the American interest in French culture throughout the early part of the 60’s.

Following the success of Mastering the Art of French cooking, Julia would write articles and became a regular columnist for The Baston Globe. Julia in her lifetime wrote 17 books and appeared after her death in the 2007 American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes book by the Library of America.

An appearance by Julia in 1961 on a book review show for the National Educational Television station in Boston which is now part of the Public Broadcasting Service or PBS, led Julia to her first television cooking shows. She’d prepared an omelet on the book review show as a demonstration and the audience loved it.

So the French Chef TV show premiered on Thursday the 26th of July 1962 as a summer pilot and this led to a regular show that debuted on Monday the 11th of February 1963 to rave reviews and was immediately successful. The French Chef ran nationally for ten years. Julia cooking on television Julia was never afraid of making mistakes. She was famously quoted as saying “Remember, if you are alone in the kitchen, who is going to see you?”

The show was the first show to be captioned for the deaf and attracted a broad audience, attributed to Julia’s bubbly personality, distinct voice, and unpatronizing manner. In 1965 and 1966 Julia won the Peabody Award for The French Chef. Her second book The French Chef was released which was a collection of recipes that she’d demonstrated on the show.

Around this time Julia was diagnosed with breast cancer and on Wednesday the 28th of February 1968 Julia had a mastectomy. She stayed ten days in hospital where Paul was devastated by the thought that he might lose Julia. Julia thought was stoic and was released from the hospital where she said she went home to a full bath and wept. She got focused back on life though, from other public tragedies, the news of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy's deaths and riots at the Chicago democratic convention that they heard over their radio inspired them to get back into work and life.

Then two years later Julia and Simone released the follow-up to Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two. Louisette’s professional relationship with Simone and Julia has ended. Julia’s fourth book From Julia Child’s Kitchen was also a great success and was illustrated with Paul’s photographs.

Throughout the ‘70s and '80s, Julia continued her TV career with numerous programs including Julia Child and Company, Julia Child and More Company, and Dinner at Julia’s. In fact, in her lifetime Julia had 14 TV shows of her own, 8 of which were released on DVD. She also would appear regularly in the 80’s on ABC’s Good Morning America.

Fans packed her cooking demonstrations and talk show hosts all wanted to interview her. Julia appeared with the Boston Symphony. Julia had become a celebrity, and Paul reveled in his wife’s success.

With the turn of a new decade in 1980 Julia won the National Book Award for her book Julia Child and More Company as well as the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1981 Julia founded along with Robert Mondavi and Richard Graff amongst others the American Institute of Wine and Food to advance the understanding, appreciation, and quality of wine and food.

The AIDS crisis in America changed Julia in the 80’s. It was thought and has been said that before then Julia had rather homophobic views some might say but she changed her thoughts and became a passionate activist for the LGBT community and an AIDS activist, triggered some say by a close friend Bob Johnson who succumbed to AIDS in 1986. In the wake of his death, Julia poured herself into hosting benefits and raising money to fight the disease.

Also in the 80’s Julia took a controversial stand some would say but became a passionate supporter of planned parenthood and a champion of abortion rights. She would host benefits to fundraise and would often make statements that were considered risky considering the possible backlash from her mainstream audience.

In the 90’s another cause that Julia became increasingly concerned about was children’s food education and she worked closely with the American Institute of Wine and Food around this issue. In 1992, Julia’s contribution to food and cooking in America was celebrated on the occasion of her 80th birthday. Three huge parties were held in her honor in Boston, Los Angeles, and New York.

In the 90’s Julia would star in four more TV series of her own and would collaborate with Jacques Pepin many times. She won a daytime Emmy award in 1996 for In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs and in 2001 for Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home.

Throughout her career, Julia would often be criticized for the use of ingredients like butter and cream. In fact, she reportedly used more than 750 pounds of butter during the time she filmed the program Baking with Julia. She addressed the criticisms of her butter usage by saying that a fanatical fear of food would take over the country’s dinning habits and that there was too much focus on nutrition rather than a focus on the pleasure of enjoying food. Julia said “Everybody is overreacting. If fear of food continues, it will be the death of gastronomy in the United States. Fortunately, the French don’t suffer from the same hysteria we do. We should enjoy food and have fun. It is one of the simplest and nicest pleasures in life.

Julia’s career in the 90’s took a slight turn when in 1993 Julia voiced Dr Julia Bleeb a character in the animated film We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story. The movie was based on Hudson Talbot’s children’s book of the same name. Despite having named stars accompanying Julia like John Goodman and Jay Leno the film was a box office bomb making only $ 9.3 million worldwide.

Following a series of strokes in 1989 Paul Child who was living in a nursing home died on Thursday the 12th of May 1994.

Julia in 1995 established The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and Culinary Arts, a private charitable foundation to make grants to further her life's work. The Foundation, originally set up in Massachusetts, later moved to Santa Barbara, California, where it is now headquartered. Inactive until after Julia's death in 2004, the Foundation makes grants to other nonprofits. The grants support gastronomy, the culinary arts, and the further development of the professional food world, all matters of paramount importance to Julia Child during her lifetime. One of the grant recipients is the Heritage Radio Network which covers the world of food, drink, and agriculture.

Julia didn't have the patience to write her own biography. So instead she turned over all her papers, documents, family letters, and even the working manuscript for her first book Mastering the Art of French Cooking to the biographer Noël Riley Fitch, who in 1997 wrote An Appetite for Life. The first biography of Julia Child.

Throughout her life, Julia loved Roses and enjoyed gardening. She even had a rose named after her, the Julia Child Rose is known in the UK as the Absolutely Fabulous Rose, I kid you not. Julia’s rose is the color of melted butter, one of her favorite ingredients and a staple in French cuisine. The Julia Child rose is said to have a licorice-like fragrance and be a consistent, hardy plant. In 2006 the rose was selected as an All-American Rose Selections winner.

Julia had met many wonderful and fabulous people throughout her life and career, Some she worked with not including Mister Rogers, Fred Rogers, James Beard, Actor George Hamilton, Martha Stewart, Jacques Pepin, Lidia Bastianich, Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Alice Waters and Hilary Clinton.

In 2000 France bestowed to Julia the knight of France’s Legion of Honour. She was also elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2003 was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as honorary doctorates from Harvard University, Johnson & Wales University, Smith College, and Brown University. In 2007 Julia was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Then in 2001 Julia moved to a retirement community and donated her house of office to Smith College where she went to college. They would later sell the house. They used the proceeds to partially fund a campus center that opened in 2003. In 2022 they honoured Julia by naming the centre the Julia McWilliams Child Campus Centre.

Julia sadly passed away on Friday the 13th of August in 2004 2 days before what would have been her 92 birthday. Julia died of kidney failure. Her ashes were placed at the Neptune Memorial Reef near Key Biscayne in Florida.

The kitchen in Julia’s home designed by Paul was the setting for three of her television shows. It is now on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC. If was fully transformed into a functional set from Julia’s home in Cambridge for the show In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs. This set hosted nearly all of Julia’s 90’s TV shows. Her copper pots and pans were on display at Copia in Napa, California, until August 2009 when they were reunited with her kitchen at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC.

Julia had talked about doing "the France book" first suggested by her husband, Paul way back in 1969. She was clear the book (if it ever got written) would be a tribute to Paul, the man who had taken her to Paris in the first place. It would be based on the hundreds of letters that he and Julia had written to Paul's twin brother, Charles, from France between 1948 and 1954.

Alex Prudhomme, Charles Child's grandson and a writer in his own right, also would suggest collaborating on the book. In 2006 the posthumous book of the life of Julia Childs was written partially with Julia’s help when she was alive. This book is called My Life In France would recounts Julia’s life with Paul in post-war France. But Julia even wrote in the foreword, that she was self-reliant, and for years had politely resisted the idea. I’m glad she went through with it though as this book is an inspiration for me and changed my life after reading it.

In 2008 her whole career in the service to the country was made available online so you can see what Julia did during the war as well as in her time serving the US Government.

On Friday the 26th of September 2014 the US postal service issued 20 million copies of the Celebrity Chefs Forever stamp series and featured portraits by Jason Seiler of five American chefs, Julia Child, Joyce Chen, James Beard, Edna Lewis, and Felipe Rojas-Lombradi.

Julia’s television career started in the ‘60s and went over four decades with shows like The French Chef, Julia Child, and Company, Julia Child and More Company, and Dinner at Julia’s. The Way to Cook, A Birthday Party for Julia Child Compliments to the Chef, Cooking with MasterChefs, Cooking in Concert: Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs, Cooking in Concert: Julia Child and Graham Kerr, More Cooking in Concert: Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, Baking with Julia, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home and finally Julia Childs Kitchen Wisdom.

Her book career included Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The French Chef Cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol 2, From Julia Child Kitchen, Julia Child and Company, Julia Child and More Company, The Way to Cook, Julia Child's Menu Cookbook, Cooking With Master Chefs, In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs, Baking with Julia, Julia's Delicious Little Dinners, Julia's Menus for Special Occasions, Julia's Breakfasts, Lunches & Suppers, Julia's Casual Dinners, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom, My Life in France and finally American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes.

“Thinking back on it now reminds that the pleasures of the table, and of life, are infinite - toujours bon appetit”

— Julia Child

The Story of Julia Child

A to Z of French Herbs - Horseradish - Raifort

Herbs de Provence Goats Cheese Salad