Elizabeth was eighteen when she returned to London and rejected the social norms of a young upper class woman. The life of a débutante did not appeal to her and she took up painting which she soon discarded in favour of acting. In 1933 she joined the Oxford Playhouse and a year later moved on to the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London. She rented a room in a large house and for her twenty-first birthday bought a refrigerator and kitchen equipment. Her mother gave Elizabeth her first cookery book, ‘The Gentle Art of Cookery’, by Hilda Leyel. It was at this time that she became romantically involved with Charles Gibson Cowan, a married man nine years older than her, who had little time for social conventions. Cowan was an outsider; working class, left wing and rootless. Elizabeth’s mother thoroughly disapproved of Cowan and arranged for Elizabeth to spend time with family friends in Malta. However, in 1938, Elizabeth was back in London, ready to embark on a new adventure with Cowan.