BOOK OF THE DAY: The French Riviera: A Cultural History.By Julian Hale. Signal Books. 234pp. £12 .
AS A part-time resident of Liguria, I like to keep my beady eye on the goings-on of my glitzier neighbours across the border and so it was with great interest that I came to read Julian Hale's The French Riviera: A Cultural History. This is the latest from the Landscape of the Imagination series by Signal Books, a small, independent, and, if this little gem is anything to go by, extremely worthy British press.
The French Riviera – heavens knows why – is still associated with glamour. For years the preserve of the rich and artistic, these days, thanks to no-frills flying, it is open to anyone. Summer is the usual bedlam of chock-a-block beaches and overpriced restaurants. Off season, ex-pats often form a forlorn collage of lonely people in backstreet bars stretching out the day over pichets of cheap red. Monte Carlo, once a byword for sophistication, is a feast of vulgarity, the main course of which is served every Sunday when the Monégasques retreat into the shadows, leaving overdressed daytrippers to sit in traffic jams of flash cars hired for the day. The era of the American big-spender is gone and, all along the coast, the Russians are keeping things going. Not the Russian aristocrats of yore, but the nouveaux riches whose money, like botox injected into a once lovely face, may plump it up temporarily but won’t really fool anyone.
And yet for all the bling and artifice there is still something about this corner of France – something in the air and in the light. Perhaps it's a sense of the past lurking in the background, away from the shoreline, over the hinterland and all the way up to the villages perchés. Whatever it is, wherever it is, Julian Hale will help you find it.
Hale, who divides his time between Menton and London, certainly knows his terrain. He guides us through every aspect and stone of it, taking us from the Roman conquest through to two world wars and up to the present day. All tastes are considered. Historians and art lovers will not be disappointed – make a list, that’s my advice. La Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence is at the top of mine. Designed entirely by Matisse, this is his last work and one that kept him going almost to his dying day. Lovers of literature will also be pleased, as almost any writer who has graced the Riviera is quoted and anecdoted. (Sadly, Richard Yates, who cut his teeth as a writer while living in Cannes, is once again overlooked).
Different nations have had their heyday along this stretch of the coast. Italians, who were once in power here, have left their traces in the architecture and hilltop towns. Wealthy Americans came between the wars, aggressively seeking pleasure, leaving their extravagant villas behind. Russian exiles built the onion-domed churches. But it was down to the British, with their innate nesting instinct, to really make their mark. They came in droves via the new railway in the 1860s and before long cricket, tennis, and bridge clubs, not to mention Anglican churches, had sprouted up all over the Riviera and across the border into Liguria.
English newspapers advertised English goods. The French retaliated with the practice of yo-yo pricing – up for the foreigners, down for the locals. A practice that continues with impressive dexterity to this day.
The French Riviera: A Cultural Historyis a well-informed and entertaining read – an ideal travelling companion, in fact.
Christine Dwyer Hickey is a writer. Her novel Last Train from Liguriawas published in June by Atlantic Books