Provence
It was a different age. The entente cordiale between our two countries was earthier then. Our women never stopped observing that French women didn’t shave under their arms, and French women wondered why our girls didn’t know how to wiggle their behinds properly. Men on both sides spent hours, sometimes days, agreeing vehemently on what bastards the Nazis were. Naturally, I fell in love with a French au pair as soon as we got back to London. She came from a small town near Nice and returned there for the summer. In the school library I looked up ‘Provence’ and read all I could find.
It did not surprise me to discover that Provence was a country long before France existed as a political entity. Its name derives from Latin: the Romans thought of it as a valuable province of Rome, partly thanks to the natural harbour at Marseilles, which was famous throughout the ancient world under the name of Massalia; Plato, who was an olive-oil trader in his day job, may have bought and sold on the seafront there. Therefore, the Mediterranean defines the southern border, whence arrives the sirocco with its yellow dust. To the north, where the mistral starts its howling, Provence is said to begin after the Donzère Gorge on the Rhône about 60 miles north of Avignon, when the whole sky opens up to the southern light. The eastern border is none other than the foothills of the Alps; in the west the Rhône provides a natural frontier.