The Narrow Smile by Peter Mayne Peter Mayne was a Royal Air Force liaison officer with the Pathan tribes of India’s turbulent North-West Frontier in 1941. This harsh and barren region is home to the Pathans (or Pakhtuns), an ethnic group split into mutually hostile and often warring tribes ruled by an inviolable code of honour, who controlled the mountain passes that were the sole means of...
The 13th century house we rented in Le Faget As my travels in the southwest of France come to a close, I want to tell you about a remarkable 13th century house I rented in the tiny village of Le Faget (pop. 306), around 31km from Toulouse. It was one of those rare AirBnB finds that is utterly unique, extremely comfortable, and surprisingly inexpensive for the value on offer. I knew from the...
Inside the choir of Sainte-Cécile cathedral Albi wasn’t an important Cathar centre but it gave its name — Albigensian — to both the heresy and the crusade that the pope launched to eradicate it. The main entrance of Sainte-Cécile cathedral The crusade was also indirectly responsible for one of the most remarkable cathedrals I’ve seen in Europe. Albi’s Cathédrale Sainte-Cécile (Photo...
Carcassonne The steep escarpment above the river Aude was first fortified by 5th century Visigoth kings, who built walls that correspond more or less to Carcasonne’s present inner circuit. It became the property of the Trencavel family, viscounts of Albi and Nîmes, in 1067. They built their imposing Château Comtal — the city’s massive inner fortress — and the church of St-Nazaire, and in 1096...
Villefranche-de-Conflent Villefranche-de-Conflent was founded as a medieval garrison town in 1092 to block incursions from Rousillon by rivals of the counts of Cerdagne. It was remodelled by the military engineer Vauban in the 17th century after the region was annexed by France. and the little town’s streets and fortifications remain largely unchanged from that time. The streets of Villefranche...
Mt. Canigou (2,785 metres) It was time to leave coastal Leucate for a new base on a hill above the town of Prades in the Pyrénées-Orientales. The looming presence of Mt. Canigou (2,785 metres) doesn’t just dominate the landscape of this region. It is the most celebrated mountain in the Catalan Pyrenees thanks to a poem by Jacint Verdaguer, the melancholy Catholic priest who walked these...
The view from Peyrepertuse castle The road from the coast rose into hills as we turned off the Perpignan highway onto a smaller route. The landscape was scattered with vineyards that lay like rugs between rocky spines. As we rounded the corners, the blur of motion revealed roses planted at the ends of some rows. Roses are more sensitive to mildew than the hardy vine stock of the region, and...
Ian Fleming Ian Fleming was overshadowed by the fictional character he created in the final decade of his life, but his own story is far more interesting. He’s been mocked as a womanizing gambler and drinker who liked flogging his wife, just another bad writer of popular fiction. But his closest friends described him as enchanting, funny, and kind. He was fluent in German, and translated Klaus...
The walls of Carcassonne One of Europe’s most brutal episodes of religious persecution happened in the south of France. It wasn’t exactly ‘France’ back then. The nation we known today is bounded by those ‘natural limits’ Cardinal Richelieu described in the 17th century: the Rhine, the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees and the Atlantic. But in the 12th century, the Massif Central was a greater...
The back cover of my book A Sunny Place for Shady People refers to Malta as “an island so small that few knew it was an independent country and even fewer could find it on the map”. It isn’t a sleight at Malta’s size, or an accusation of insignificance. It’s a comment on how little foreigners know about a country whose strategic location at the centre of the Mediterranean placed it in...