This long interview, recorded with the Swiss critic Pierre Courthion when the artist was recovering from an operation in bed during the Nazi Occupation, was never published - until now.
1870 was a cultural Golden Age, but it was also the background for the Dreyfus Affair and the violence of the Commune. This panorama is shown through the eyes of the age's personalities.
A slim, charming and witty riff on Proustian themes - the shallowness of society, the impossibility of love, the enduring power of art... Life-affirming!
After graduating in Germany in 1939, FH was sent as an archivist to Paris, where he documented ordinary life throughout the war. He vanished in Berlin in 1945 and this is the first publicati... read more
A large-format, lavishly illustrated book on 16 voyages of discovery that took place between 1714 and 1854 by the famous (Lap?rouse, Bougainville et Dumont d'Urville) and the less so (La Ba... read more
A beautiful book on Christian Dior, copious photographs, many old. The book is in fine condition, black cloth with the title indented on the cover and spine. The dust jacket is good, creased... read more
Beautifully photographed; draws on the Dior Archive and conversations with Maria Grazia Chiuri, creative director of the fashion house. 3 vols in a slipcase.
Three dark-skinned bodies wash up on the beach of a Mediterranean island. The attempts of the islanders to hush up the implications are upset by the arrival of a detective, who unpicks their... read more
Everyday at least for that great patroness... loved not least because she paid her bills on time. This illustrated chronology of the porcelain, its commissioning and use, is a magnificent bo... read more
A hotchpotch of journal entries from the last seven years to do with living around Paris, surprisingly free of the angst found in much of her other writing.
By extraordinary chance, the author discovered an address book in the inner pocket of a vintage diary dating back to 1951. It disclosed an amazing list of luminaries from the European avant-... read more
A deft and witty excursion to Paris for coffee with Sartre, de Beauvoir et alia by Sarah Bakewell; a winter and spring on the shores of Lake Baikal with only a portable library and ice - and... read more
Leadership and moral compromise in Occupied France, seen through the lens of P?tain's trial in 1945. Julian Jackson is superb on the French Occupation and his biography of de Gaulle was magi... read more
For those who would sell their soul for an éclair. Mille-feuilles for autumn, croissants for Sunday mornings, crêpes for tea, cakes and puddings so sublime your hips will forgive you.
The beautiful open landscape of the Gironde estuary and two vineyards - Château Rauzan-Ségla (Margaux) and Chateau Canon (St Emilion) - are the subject of this lavish book. Patrick Messina... read more
A facsimile edition of Carmontelle's original, illustrated presentation of the 8-hectare garden he designed for the Duc de Chartres in 1779, on the cusp of the French Revolution. It had an i... read more
Five stories - from a young artist and a deserting soldier to an old man reminiscing beneath a lime tree - all interwoven by the common threads of war, memory and German history.
An elderly woman in a home is losing her power of speech: a therapist delicately helps her to unburden herself of a secret... The dark horse of new French fiction.