Travel
James Boswell An Account of
Corsica , current edition published
as
The Journal of a Tour to Corsica
(In Print Publishing, UK). Typically
robust and witty account of encounters
with the Corsican people. Excerpts
published in
Journals of James
Boswell (Mandarin/Yale UP).
Dorothy Carrington Granite
Island (Penguin, UK, o/p). By far
the best study of Corsica ever written
in English. A fascinating and immensely
comprehensive book, combining the
writer's personal experiences with an
evocative portrayal of historical
figures and events.
Julien Green Paris (Marion
Boyars). A collection of very personal
sketches and impressions of the city, by
an American who has lived all his life
in Paris, writes in French, and is
considered one of the great French
writers of the century. Bilingual text.
Richard Holmes Fatal
Avenue (Pimlico; Trafalgar Square).
The phrase is de Gaulle's, used to
describe France's northeast frontier
whose notorious topographical
vulnerability has made it the natural
route for invaders since time began.
From the Channel to Alsace, Holmes
relates the wars and the personalities
to the places as they are today, from
the Hundred Years War to World War II.
An exciting and informative read.
Richard Holmes Footsteps
(Flamingo; Vintage). A marvellous mix of
objective history and personal account,
such as the tale of the author's own
excitement at the events of May 1968 in
Paris, which led him to investigate and
reconstruct the experiences of the
British in Paris during the 1789
Revolution.
Laurence Sterne A
Sentimental Journey Through France and
Italy (Penguin; Viking). Rambling
tale by the eccentric eighteenth-century
author of Tristram Shandy who,
despite the title, never gets further
than Versailles.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Travels with a Donkey (OUP; Koneman).
Mile-by-mile account of Stevenson's
twelve-day trek in the Haute Loire and
Cévennes uplands with the donkey
Modestine. Devotees of Stevenson's
footpaths - and there's a surprising
number in France - might be interested
in his first book, Inland Voyage
, on the waterways of the north.
Freda White Three Rivers
of France (Pavilion; Faber, o/p),
West of the Rhone (Faber, US, o/p),
Ways of Aquitaine (Faber, o/p).
Freda White spent a great deal of time
in France in the 1950s before tourism
came along to the backwater communities
that were her interest. These are all
evocative books, slipping in the history
and culture painlessly, if not always
too accurately.
History
To begin, select a topic in the
navigation bar to the left
Society and politics
N. A. Addinall (ed) French
Political Parties: A Documentary Guide
(U of Wales Press, UK). Clear and
concise textbook introduction to the
constitution and political parties of
the Fifth Republic; quotations and
source materials are not translated but
this need not deter non-French speakers.
Roland Barthes
Mythologies (Vintage; Noonday) and
The Eiffel Tower (California UP,
US). Mythologies is an immensely
readable structuralist critique on the
socio-historical importance of myth and
its signs in France today, accompanied
by a series of quirky examples. The
short text, The Eiffel Tower ,
demystifies the Eiffel tower as
synecdoche of Paris - he accepts
Maupassant's solution of eliminating it
from the vista by going to have dinner
in the Eiffel Tower restaurant.
Jean Baudrillard Selected
Writings (Stanford UP). Essential
reading to get an overview of the most
interesting contemporary French
philosopher and artist. His notion of
the simulacrum (the image of the essence
of an object) and the role of the object
as sign within the consumer system is
complex but revelatory.
Simone de Beauvoir The
Second Sex (Vintage). One of the
prime texts of Western feminism, written
in 1949, covering women's inferior
status in history, literature,
mythology, psychoanalysis, philosophy
and everyday life. The style is dry and
intellectual, but the subject matter
easily compensates.
Denis Belloc Slow Death
in Paris (Quartet, UK). A harrowing
account of a heroin addict in Paris. Not
recommended holiday reading but if you
want to know about the seedy underbelly
of the city this is the book.
Mary Blume A French
Affair: The Paris Beat 1965-1998
(Plume). Incisive and witty observations
on contemporary French life by the
International Herald Tribune
reporter who was stationed there for
three decades.
Émilie Carles Wild Herb
Soup (Indigo, UK). A moving and
inspiring autobiography of a girl born
and raised in the remote Alpine valley
of the Névache near Briançon in the
early years of the twentieth century. As
well as giving an interesting account of
peasant life, it records the development
of social conscience and an
extraordinary moral toughness as Émilie
becomes aware of the brutality and
harshness of peasant life, sees her
brothers die in World War I, experiences
Resistance in World War II, and finally
finds herself, as an old lady, leading
the campaign to stop the desecration of
her beautiful natal valley by the
construction of an autoroute .
Claire Duchen Feminism in
France: From May '68 to Mitterrand
(Routledge). Charts the evolution of the
women's movement through to its
mid-1980s crisis, clarifying the
divergent political stances and feminist
theory that informs the various groups
and placing them in the wider French
political context.
Jonathan Fenby On the
Brink (Warner; Arcade Publishing).
While France isn't perhaps quite as
endangered as the title suggests, this
provocative book takes a long, hard look
at the problems facing contemporary
France.
Gisèle Halimi Milk for
the Orange Tree (Quartet, UK). A
gutsy autobiographical story of a woman
who was born in Tunisia, the daughter of
an Orthodox Jewish family, and who ran
away to Paris to become a lawyer, and
defender of women's rights, Algerian FLN
fighters and all unpopular causes.
Bernard Henri-Lévy
Adventures on the Freedom Road: The
French Intellectuals in the 20th Century
(Harvill). Huge, clever and complex
essays by contemporary
philosopher-celebrity, mercilessly
analysing the response of all the great
French thinkers, of Left and Right, to
the key events of the century. Easy to
dip into, surprisingly readable and very
provocative.
David Thomson Democracy
in France Since 1870 (Cassell, UK,
o/p). An enquiry into why a country with
such a strong socialist tradition should
have had so many reactionary
governments.
Gillian Tindall
Célestine: Voices from a French Village
(Minerva; Holt). Intrigued by some
nineteenth century love letters left
behind in the house she has bought in
Chassignolles, Berry, Tindall researches
the history of the village back to the
1840s. She produces a meticulous,
thoughtful and moving portrait of rural
French life and its slow but dramatic
transformation. A brilliant piece of
social history.
Eugen Weber My France
(Harvard UP). A collection of essays,
fascinating and offbeat, about numerous
aspects of French culture and politics.
Some prior knowledge of mainstream
French history is needed to make the
most of them.
Arts
John Berger The Success and
Failure of Picasso (Penguin, o/p;
Vintage). The success is self-explanatory;
the failure (and the tragedy) lies in
Picasso's poverty of subject matter - or
so Berger argues in this brief and
highly persuasive book. Perhaps the best
one-volume study of Picasso in English.
Brassaï The Secret Paris
of the Thirties (Thames & Hudson,
UK, o/p). Extraordinary photos of the
capital's nightlife in the 1930s -
brothels, music halls, street-cleaners,
transvestites and the underworld - each
one a work of art and a familiar world
(now long since gone) to Brassaï and his
mate, Henry Miller, who accompanied him
on his nocturnal expeditions.
David J. Brown Bridges
Across Time (Mitchell Beazley, UK,
o/p). A very beautiful book about both
the technical and aesthetic aspects of
bridge-building; not exclusively about
France, but includes many French bridges
from the Roman Pont du Gard to the Pont
d'Avignon, Eiffel's constructions and
the state-of-the-art Pont de Normandie
across the Seine estuary.
André Chastel French Art:
The Ancien Régime 1620-1775
(Flammarion). This sumptuous volume by a
renowned art historian combines
exquisite pictures with political,
cultural and artistic detail to
illustrate the painting, sculpture and
architecture that emerged during the
reigns of Louis XIII, XIV and XV.
Kenneth J. Comant
Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture,
800-1200 (Yale UP). Good European
study with a focus on Cluny and the
Santiago pilgrim route.
Norma Evenson Paris: A
Century of Change, 1878-1978 (Yale
UP). A large, illustrated volume that
makes the development of urban planning
and the fabric of Paris an enthralling
subject - mainly because the author's
ultimate concern is always with people,
not panoramas.
Edward Lucie-Smith A
Concise History of French Painting (Thames
& Hudson, US, o/p). If you're after an
art reference book, this will do as well
as any... though there are of course
hundreds of books on particular French
art movements.
John Richardson , The Life
of Picasso: Vol 1 1881-1906 (Pimlico;
Random House) and Vol 2 1907-17
(Cape; Random House). No twentieth-century
artist has ever been subjected to
scrutiny as close as Picasso receives in
Richardson's exhaustive and brilliantly
illustrated biography. The author has
taken many years to complete the first
two volumes, and there's a risk he'll
never reach the end, but the mould-breaking
years have now been covered, and it's
impossible to imagine how anyone could
surpass Richardson's treatment of them.
Volumes 3 and 4 are in the pipeline.
Vivian Russell , Monet's
Garden (Frances Lincoln; Stewart
Tabori & Chang). Sumptuous colour
photographs by the author, old
photographs of the artist and
reproductions of his paintings. Superb
opening chapter on Monet as "poet of
nature" and a detailed description of
the garden's evolution, seasonal cycle
and its current maintenance which will
delight serious gardeners.
Gertrude Stein The
Autobiography of Alice B Toklas (Penguin;
Vintage). The goings-on at Stein's
famous salon in Paris. The most
accessible of her works, written from
the point of view of Stein's long-time
lover, gives an amusing account of the
Paris art and literary scene of the
1910s and 1920s.
France in literature
Listed below is a highly selective
recommendation of works - mostly novels
- that are rooted in the various French
regions, and which would make good
holiday reading. PARIS AND AROUND Steven
Barclay (ed) A Place in the...
read more >>
Guides
100 Walks in the French Alps (Hodder &
Stoughton). A very good guide to hiking
in the Alps, detailing which walks are
appropriate for different abilities.
James Bromwich The Roman Remains of
Southern France ...
read more >>
