Day 1874 (Tuesday) 26th July 2022

It wasn’t quite as hot today and we had planned on going to Roquebrune Cap Martin but Huw had started fixing the window in the living room yesterday and wanted to finish it today. So we are going to go tomorrow.  After doing a few household chores I settled down on the balcony reading my book. I’ve just started reading Leon Uris’s Exodus and I’d forgotten how riveting it is. Speaking of books…

11 books that tell you (almost) everything you need to know about France

From history to food, manners to politics, there is a lot to understand about France - so we asked our readers to recommend the best books to help explain the country.

Political tomes, comedic autobiographies, foodie guides and profiles of great Frenchmen – via a children’s classic – here’s what they recommended. 

A Year in Provence (this is one of my all-time favourite books and I’ve read it many times)

Peter Mayle

It’s a book that had to be here. It may now be over 30 years old, but Mayle’s seasonal diary of an immigrant life in rural Luberon is as French life-affirming as it gets.

It’s not all rosé and roses – January’s bitter mistral is something to be endured rather than enjoyed even by the locals – but the travelogue offers more than a hint of Provençal life, where time runs … differently. There’s no wonder it sparked an exodus.

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

Simon Scharma

To even begin to know modern France, you need to know the French Revolution. Enter Simon Scharma, whose landmark work charts the social and cultural history of the defining period of French history. You may even recognise a modern politician or two in the study of the leading lights of their age. 

France

Emile Chabal

Hardly an original title, but this brief history of the country from 1940 through to the gilets jaunes protests of 2019, explains in just 180 pages how the past 80 years of history have led to the wonderfully, frustratingly, complex country that France is today.

The Discovery of France 

Graham Robb

Anecdotes and thumbnail sketches of people, places and customs combine to tell the history – and the story – of France. It’s like you’ve travelled across the country without actually travelling across it. France: An Adventure History by the same author is also well worth a read.

Deep France

Celia Brayfield

Along similar lines to Mayle’s A Year in Provence, Brayfield chronicles life in La France profonde of the Béarn, in the shadows of the Pyrenees. Tasty recipes – thrown in for free – are an added bonus.

A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle

Julian Jackson

This multi-award-winning biography of wartime-leader-turned-president Charles de Gaulle, published in 2019, draws on a vast range of published and unpublished memoirs and documents.

De Gaulle is a pivotal figure in modern French history and this book reveals a lot about the man himself, and also about the country he fought so hard for, which eventually rejected him.

Revolution française: Emmanuel Macron and the quest to reinvent a nation

Sophie Pedder

Love him or hate him, but few can deny that Emmanuel Macron has also made a huge impact on more recent French history, and this book from Economist journalist Sophie Pedder traces his rise.

The book ends with Macron’s 2017 election, and obviously much has happened since then, but it still provides a fascinating insight into Macron and Macronism which helps to make sense of the turbulent times we are living through?

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French

Jean Nadeau

Jean Nadeau sets about unravelling the riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma that is France.

It’s aim is a look at the culture and social mores of France – revealing the secret ideas about land, food, privacy and language and weaves together the threads of French society, uncovering the essence of life in France.

Le Petit Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just a children’s book. It’s a philosophical, humanist, tale of a fantastical journey of self discovery.

It may not help with the day-to-day trials of living in France, but it may give you an insight into the contradictions and mindset of many French people. With 140 million copies sold worldwide, it’s one of the best-selling and most-translated books ever published.

A Year in the Merde (this is more about Paris than France and it’s good read)

Stephen Clarke

With names changed to protect the innocent – and the author – A Year in the Merde chronicles the semi-fictionalised year in the life of a Briton in Paris.

Clarke has been described as the anti-Mayle, with his rather more acerbic view of French life. Paris clearly isn’t Provence. But it may help you get served by even the grumpiest Parisian waiter; how to make perfect vinaigrette every time; and how not to buy a house in the French countryside…

A History of Modern France – From the Revolution to the War with Terror

Jonathan Fenby

If you didn’t study French history at school, sometimes you need a good primer to help you put France’s history in context.

Fenby’s book does just that, taking a broad sweep over 200 years of French history and guiding the reader through the many turbulent changes in society and politics. Need to understand the current parliamentary deadlock? It all goes back to Charles de Gaulle, who was influenced by the politics of the 20s and 30s . . . demonstrating why history is so vital to understand a country.