Day 3157 (Thursday) 29th January 2026

This is Villefranche-sur-Mer

and this is the old station in Beaulieu and the new one.

It was a beautiful day today, at last, the sun was shining and the sky was bright blue again – hooray.

Huw went to do some work on the villa and came home at lunchtime and took me into Nice to go to my lesson, but first we had our weekly kebab in the park, it was so good to sit in the sun again. 

The beginning of my French class was very difficult but it got a bit better, but by 3.15 my head to ready to explode. I walked to Place Massena where they are building the stands for the carnival and it’s all happening soon.

There was a delay with the trains and it took me a while to get home. The light over the bay was beautiful in the later afternoon.

Here are the rest of the books recommended by Leyla Alyanak 

60 Million Frenchmen Can’t be wrong
by Jean-Benoit Nadeau

Published in 2003, this book is a bit outdated, because even in France, things change. We are now 67 million, 10% more than we were back then, our Presidents rule for five, not seven years, our regions have been consolidated from 22 to 13 and some new departments created and so on.

But this is possible the most helpful France books I've ever read about how things work here, and who is responsible for what. Even if things have changed somewhat, you'll still get plenty from it. It manages to simplify a bureaucracy that usually feels impenetrable. I only wish the authors would come back to France and update it.

Revolution Française
by Sophie Pedder

This book is not about what you may think it is, the French Revolution. Its subtitle is "Emmanuel Macron and the quest to reinvent a nation", and that's what it's about.

The author, a journalist (The Economist), traces an unknown Macron's rise to power and the initial part of his first mandate (there have since been new French elections which brought him back to power in a minority government).

Unfortunately the book stops early in Macron's term, which makes it difficult to use as a foundation to understand today's French politics. That said, it does say a lot about how a country so anchored in centralisation and bureaucracy managed to elect a relative unknown to the highest job in the land.

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
by Simon Schama

At 848 pages this is not a short read, but it is a relatively breezy one, moving quickly along. That said, it is packed with details but you can skip through those you don't need the first time around – this is the kind of book you can return to over and over.

It is the perfect introduction to the French Revolution, without which it is difficult to understand the France of today.

A Year in Provence
by Peter Mayle (this is my favourite book ever.)

Has anyone NOT read this?

A Year in Provence is a travel memoir about the year the author and his wife spent in the Luberon village of Ménerbes in Provence in the early 1980s (there has since been a sequel, My 25 Years in Provence). He provides great insight into their daily life in France, along with the challenges they face and the new things they learn. 

The book is divided into months, beginning with the purchase of the house in January and the decision to stay in December. The author shares his passion for French cuisine and explains their increasing immersion into French culture: they learn to play traditional boules, and are introduced to the world of truffles. This is a classic, translated worldwide, and put Ménerbes on the map, some would say making it too famous. 

Dirt
by Bill Buford

Bill Buford, the author of Heat, uses his humour and passion in the kitchen to tell us about his tumultuous move to Lyon and his new life there with wife and twin toddlers. He doesn't speak French but doesn't let that stand in his way. He has a few names on his list whom he hopes will help him find work so that he can learn the culinary secrets of Lyon, and he throws himself into learning the secrets of French cuisine. If you love food and love France, this will be a real treat, deep, detailed and personal.

One More Croissant for the Road
by Felicity Cloake

Felicity Cloake, best known as a food columnist for the Guardian in the UK, takes on the classic food of France – but not in the luxury you’d expect: she takes to the streets, cycling with her trusty steed Eddy, over hills and vales, to find the best dishes in France.

She stops for a croissant every day, keeping a running rating system to catalogue her journey.

This book uncovers two very different sides of France: traditional French cuisine and the grittier side of cycling and camping through backroads. Felicity blends five-star dining with crushed pastries in her panniers at a damp campsite to present France in a way you’ve never seen it before. As a bonus, this professional food taster offers classic French recipes we can all enjoy, wherever we are in the world. 

My Life in France
by Julia Child

When American newlywed Julia Child first moved to France with her husband in 1948, she was not at all the francophile she would become after sampling the food, shopping in local markets and familiarising herself with the culture. She didn't even speak French.

But she fell in love with the country, its people and its food, learning to cook, to argue with produce sellers, and eventually becoming a teacher and starting to teach French cuisine.

This book traces her arrival in France, her daily struggles to learn French cooking, and her battles to get her first cookbook published, before she became one of the most famous chefs of the 20th century.

Astérix le Gaulois
by Goscinny and Uderzo

The Astérix series are graphic novels, Tintin style, rather than narrative books, but no self-respecting francophile can afford to ignore this feisty little Gaul and his village's fight against Caesar's legionnaires during the Roman occupation of Gaul. Astérix and his partner in crime, Obélix, successfully keep their tiny village out of Rome's reach, the only Gallic village to escape Caesar's troops.

There's plenty of history, laughter and caricature, and of course the Gauls always win against the hapless Romans because of the magic potion their druid feeds them before they go into battle.

Rendez-Vous in Cannes
by Jennifer Bonhet

Rendez-vous in Cannes tells the story of two women. The first one, Anna Carson, is a famous movie producer attending the Cannes Film Festival for the first time in years. The other is journalist Daisy Harris, invited to cover the festival.

As the story unfolds, the paths of these two different women will cross in the most unexpected ways, and the Cannes Film festival will change their lives. The book provides an intense feeling of the lifestyle and atmosphere of Cannes the city and its film festival, as well as the Riviera more generally. 

Explore Ménerbes, France, a Luberon village of contrasts: siege walls, serene abbeys, artistic muses, and a quirky corkscrew museum.

This was Badger in his box last night.