French Riviera: A Literary Guide for Travellers Book

This gem of a book is a must for any fiction writer. It is an eye-opener that traces the love affairs between a literary pantheon of fiction writers and the magic of The Riviera. It shows that it was not only artists like Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso, and Matisse who did much of their greatest work in Provence, but that the same applied to just about any British or American writer you could possibly think of.
Graham Greene fell out with the UK tax authorities and moved to Antibes, where he rekindled a liaison with a Frenchwoman and bought an apartment to live and work in. There he wrote Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, The Human Factor, and Monsignor Quixote. He also published "J'Accuse - the Dark Side of Nice," which claimed that the City of Nice and its Police were in collusion with the Mafia. As imagined, this did not win him many friends locally.
The connection between writers and Provence goes back a long way. In 1763, one of the earliest writers to discover Nice and the South of France and to write about it for a British audience was Tobias Smollett, who wrote epic novels more than a century before Dickens. He is mentioned too in the book.
Truly, this volume covers an impressive number of writers, from Anthony Burgess, who lived in Monaco, Agatha Christie and Katharine Mansfield in Menton, Anais Nin in St Tropez, Noel Coward and T.S. Eliot at Cap Ferrat, Ian Fleming, Hemingway, James Joyce, P.G. Woodhouse, and of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who did more than anyone else to popularize the 'Riviera' as a fashionable hangout for writers and associated glitterati. When he and Zelda set up a mansion on the Cap Antibes to host the most famous house parties on the Cote D'Azur, he chose to do it in the summer months, whereas traditionally the English wealthy would visit in the winter, saving the summer for the 'Season' of Henley and other must-be-at events.
This book will keep you fascinated as you pore through all the stories about so many writers you have on your shelves. So get it.