Vive La France!

One moment, Janine Marsh was on a booze cruise to northern France. The next, she was making an offer on a rundown old barn in the Pas-de-Calais. This is the story of how a corporate Brit from the city found more than she could have ever imagined living the good life in France.

1946. In an abandoned suitcase at Grand Central Terminal, Grace Healey discovers a dozen photographs of different women. Learning that they were sent to occupied Europe to aid the resistance, Grace makes it her mission to find out the truth behind the women who never came home. Inspired by true events.

Woven into the fabric of a rural French community, the weird and wonderful lives of people on the periphery intertwine unexpectedly in this selection of stories from Emmanuelle Pagano.

Returning to Paris from the country after the Franco-Prussian war, the St Clair family discovers a city of barricades, its streets on fire, its houses ransacked. Caught up in the cruelty of the Commune, the St Clair’s daughter, little Helene, falls ill and is captured. Escape sees Helene lost, alone and fending for herself on the war-torn streets.

Tactics, technology and tenacity have shaped this tour of endurance into a globally revered sporting event. Without a homegrown winner in two decades, how does a cycle race through campagne, bourgade and ville remain so uniquely French? What goes on tour stays in this extraordinary history.

... if you want, to that is. And why wouldn't you?

An exhaustive narrative history of L'Hexagone

Apparently…

A (hilarious) portrait of the artist as a young woman.

French food: in all its glory.

A trip to Europe becomes a hotbed of desire. And guess where it all starts?

Dumas' tale of just retribution.

Proust: most prominent.

France's Western Front during World War 1: a great place to escape your dusty British aristocratic upbringing.

Zola tackles the magic of department stores; the only way he knows how.

How Julia Child fell in love with French cuisine.

'The bells! The bells!' And all that.