France Memoir

AMAZED BY SPAIN is a light-hearted account of two couples’ unexpected relocation to inland Alicante. Before sisters Sue and Linda inherit a village house in the hills they have little interest in Spain, but on travelling out to see their new possession they begin to warm to the idea of spending time there with their husbands Paul and Bill. After an enjoyable summer holiday the prospect of living in the village becomes irresistible and this book describes their transition from visitors to residents and the diverse selection of people they meet along the way. This amusing and informative ...

Delicious staples of a great meal, bread, cheese, and wine develop their complex flavors through a process known as fermentation. Katie Quinn spent months as an apprentice with some of Europe’s most acclaimed experts to study the art and science of fermentation. Visiting grain fields, vineyards, and dairies, Katie brings the stories and science of these foods to the table, explains the process of each craft, and introduces the people behind them.

Napoleon inspires passionately held and often conflicting visions. Was he a godlike genius, a romantic avatar, a megalomaniac monster, a compulsive warmonger or just a nasty little dictator? Whilst he displayed elements of these traits at certain times, Napoleon was none of these things. He was a man and, as Adam Zamoyski presents him in this landmark biography, a rather ordinary one at that.

Napoleón ha hecho correr océanos de tinta, sus campañas militares, su ascenso a emperador, sus derrotas y sus exilios han sido tratados de casi todas las formas imaginables. La biografía de Bonaparte que encontramos en Breve Historia de Napoleón, no obstante, pretende combinar las biografías basadas en los detalles más íntimos del emperador francés con aquellas que presentan sus logros públicos, en una obra de carácter divulgativo que recoge su conocida capacidad como legislador y estratega militar.

THE HERMIT AND THE HITCHHIKER: A SPANISH ENCOUNTER is the tale of two men whose fortuitous meeting in the hills of South-East Spain leads to an unlikely friendship which changes their lives forever. After overcoming the initial reticence caused by their disparate ages and backgrounds, their improbable alliance leads both men to learn from each other and reassess their respective goals, not least when Roy’s old flame, Alicia, returns to the area with her daughter Sara. Touching, humorous and informative, the story of Roy and Ryan’s relationship with each other and their female friends is...

FINDING MY FEET is the second instalment of THE RELUCTANT EXPAT, Alan Laycock’s light-hearted account of his life in Spain. Part Three of Alan’s story is now also available.

When Nigel Hamson arrives at the quiet village in Extremadura, no-one knows who he is or what he is doing there. Over the following weeks his eccentric behaviour intrigues the villagers, but little by little his intentions become clear, first to himself, and then to the people he befriends. In Ways of Escape – An Outsider in Spain, we follow Nigel’s first stumbling steps to carve out a new life for himself in the Spanish hinterland, as he adjusts his own needs and aspirations to those of the close-knit community. Both light-hearted and informative, this unusual account of a man striving...

Voltaire, born François-Marie Arouet in Paris, France, was a writer and leading figure of the Enlightenment. His insistence that all authority could and must be questioned was so radical, he ended up in prison several times and was ultimately exiled. Voltaire’s writings were instrumental in influencing the American and French revolutions. Man as a being with natural rights was a radical concept at the time, but one which the American founding fathers embraced. Voltaire’s anger was specifically directed at the arbitrary powers of the state and the church.

In the wake of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, and Pope Pius VII shared a common goal: to reconcile the church with the state. But while they were able to work together initially, formalizing an agreement in 1801, relations between them rapidly deteriorated. In 1809, Napoleon ordered the Pope's arrest. Ambrogio Caiani provides a pioneering account of the tempestuous relationship between the emperor and his most unyielding opponent.

Before Picasso became Picasso—the iconic artist now celebrated as one of France's leading figures—he was constantly surveilled by the police. Amidst political tensions in the spring of 1901, he was flagged as an anarchist by the security services. Though he soon became the leader of the cubist avant-garde, and became increasingly wealthy as his reputation grew worldwide, Picasso's art was largely excluded from public collections in France for the next four decades.

A major biography of the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution, looks past the storybook general and selfless champion of righteous causes who, at the age of 19, volunteered to fight under George Washington, casting aside fortune and family (from one of France's oldest families; his ancestors served in the Crusades and alongside Joan of Arc) to advance the transcendent aims of liberty and justice.

Louis XIV, known as the Grand Monarch, or the Sun King, was a sovereign of the House of Bourbon who reigned as King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years is the longest recorded of any monarch in European history. In the age of absolutism, Louis XIV's France was the leader in the growing centralization of power.

When Carl Coulton is finally released from prison his kindly probation officer suggests cycling as a form of therapy. Carl needs to let off steam, and how better to do it than by pounding the pedals on the leafy Lancashire lanes close to his home? Therapy it proves to be, but of a kind that no-one but Carl could have imagined. In a story which will cause motorists to give those dratted bikes a wider berth and allow harassed cyclists to live out their wildest fantasies, we follow Carl’s progress from rehabilitated ex-con to the most perilous man on two wheels in living memory. With ...

Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne was painted by Édouard Manet and inspired Émile Zola, who immortalized her in his scandalous novel Nana. Her rumored affairs with Napoleon III and the future King Edward VII kept gossip columns full. But her glamorous existence hid a dark secret: She was no comtesse. She was born into abject poverty, raised on a squalid backstreet among the dregs of Parisian society. Yet she transformed herself into an enchantress.

In 1948, after surviving World War II by escaping Nazi-occupied France for refugee camps in Switzerland, the author's grandparents, Anna and Armand, bought an old stone house in a remote, picturesque village in the South of France. Five years later, Anna packed her bags and walked out on Armand, taking the typewriter and their children. Aside from one brief encounter, the two never saw or spoke to each other again, never remarried, and never revealed what had divided them forever.

One of the most famous women of the 20th century, Marie Curie was a trailblazer in the truest sense. Known for her discovery of two radioactive elements, radium and polonium, Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. She remains the only woman to win two Nobel Prizes in different sciences.

HEADING SOUTH is a light-hearted account of an English brother and sister’s reconnection with the Spanish side of their family. When the author was just four years old their father, Francisco, left the family home in Preston, Lancashire and disappeared from their lives. One day Adam, now twenty-eight, receives a letter from his errant dad and decides to take a break from supply teaching and accept an invitation to visit him in rural Malaga. Later joined by his sister Kate, a series of events begins to unfold which promises to change both their lives forever. Please ‘look inside’ ...

Ernest Hemingway's literary ambitions took root in France in the 1920s among some of the most extravagantly creative artists of the twentieth century. Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and others were drawn to the left bank of the Seine in Paris after World War I. Hemingway joined them and, with the publication of his book The Sun Also Rises became one of the most powerful forces in the vortex of talent and experimentation.

Susan Tate Ankeny was sorting through the belongings of her late father - a World War II bombardier who had bailed from a burning B-17 over Nazi-occupied France in 1944 - when she found two boxes. One contained her dad's Air Force uniform, and the other an unfinished memoir, stacks of envelopes, black-and-white photographs, mission reports, dog tags, and the fake identity cards he used in his escape. Ankeny spent more than a decade from that moment tracking down letter writers, their loved ones, and anyone who had played a role in her father's story.

When Daniel Guiet was a child and his family moved country, as they frequently did, his father had one possession, a tin bread box, that always made the trip. Daniel was admonished never to touch the box, but one day he couldn't resist. What he found astonished him: a .45 automatic and five full clips; three slim knives; a length of wire with a wooden handle at each end; thin pieces of paper with random numbers on them; several passports with his father's photograph, each bearing a different name.