posted on 20 Jul 2018

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, illustrated by Paul Hogarth

It may not be quite fair to say that Peter Mayle, who died recently aged 78, was single-handedly responsible for a genre of aspirational continental property-owning ‘Brits abroad’ literature, but it isn’t far from the truth. In the late-80s, having retired as an advertising executive and become a writer – primarily of children’s educational books – he wrote a long letter to his agent explaining why he hadn’t been able to make more headway with his first novel. He and his wife had moved from Devon to an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the tiny Provencal village of Ménerbes, which they had bought on impulse. They were deep into the work that would be needed to make this charming house habitable but were also dealing with the vagaries of learning French, settling into the village and finding reliable workmen for the apparently endless work that needed to be done.

His agent apparently said he shouldn’t worry too much about the novel – this was a first-time effort and in any case would be hard to place. But write me 250 pages more of what was in that letter, he apparently said, and I’ll sell it anywhere. And Mayle did and his agent was true to his word. The rest is history and it made Mayle millions.

I’ll admit that when A Year In Provence first came out in 1989, nothing would have persuaded me to read it. it seemed somehow so much of its time – the rising affluence of the middle classes, the growing desire for properties in the Med… I knew someone – a company director, of course – for whom Mayle was a kind of hero. She was in the process of buying a first property in France and I fully expected that the same smug self-satisfaction and entitlement that came off her in waves would be evident in Mayle’s book.

And then recently, on a whim, and following the numerous obituaries of Mayle, I recalled that Paul Hogarth, one of my favourite book illustrators, had at one time published an illustrated A Year in Provence. I thought it might be worth a try; even if the book turned out to be as insufferable as I expected it to be, there would  still be Hogarth’s pictures to enjoy.

I read it at a sitting, stopping only to eat – and it was hugely enjoyable. Indeed, it has been a long time since a relatively light read has given me such pleasure.

Whether this would have been the case without the illustrations I’m not sure, because they are absolutely glorious and to my mind they make the book. But that said, it must also be acknowledged that A Year in Provence is superbly written. The prose is simple, flexible and economical, and it is beautifully structured (a single year, as the title suggests, taken a month at a time as the seasons turn); its portrait of village life, of villagers gradually becoming friends, gradually becoming neighbours, is warmly affectionate and keenly observed. (All of which can be said of Hogarth’s illustrations too, by the way.)

I think Mayle went on to scrape the Provence barrel pretty thoroughly and I’m not sure I would rush to read any of the follow-up books or the later novels. But A Year in Provence is unalloyed pleasure, and Paul Hogarth’s accompanying artwork offers a match made in heaven. Hogarth went to Provence in 1991 to do the drawings and writes warmly about the experience of collaborating with Mayle in his wonderful autobiography Drawing on Life. That he took the task as seriously as his earlier collaborations with Graham Greene, Lawrence Durrell, Robert Graves and Brendan Behan I think also says something about his own regard for Mayle’s book.

I think this large format illustrated edition is probably getting quite scarce now – though not necessarily expensive. The original was published by Hamish Hamilton and there was a subsequent Book Club Associates (BCA) edition, which is what mine is. It cost literally coppers and I can see nothing to distinguish it from the publisher’s original – it’s a beautifully made book. And for people like me who loathe travelling, it’s the perfect armchair travel book.

Alun Severn

July 2018