A few years ago, one of the books to escape the attentions of my periodical efforts to escape the "dead hand of the past" was France Observed, published by Thames and Hudson in 1959, and given to me in 1962, the year I won the English Prize. The inscription, in my Latin-obsessed school reads "Ling. Anglica" awarded when I was in the Rhetorica class.
The book covers each Parisienne arrondissement, Paris itself, and then each of the French regions. A great writer, or academician, presumably with native knowledge of the area, writes the essay that introduces the idiosyncracies and history of the area, and each piece of writing is preciously literary as well as informative.
What strikes me as odd now, though not at the time, is the lack of any mention of the person responsible for the beautiful translation of the texts of such luminaries as Jean Cocteau, Georges Duhamel, André Maurois and many others.
Quite extraordinary.
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