A Year in Provence, 35 years on

An Englishman’s home is his converted farmhouse in the south of France with swimming pool and amusing cast of local rustics.

I have a certain idea of France. Though I visit quite often these days, my France is the France of dimly remembered family holidays with their chocolate chaud and Orangina, sexy '80s films like 37°2 le matin (Betty Blue) and best of all those breathtaking Tours de France with Bernard Hinault, Laurent Fignon, Stephen Roche, Greg LeMond, Pedro Delgado et al. before the tedium of the Indurain era.

Les Trente Glorieuses may have been behind it but in retrospect it seems like a golden era. France seemed bright and optimistic, simultaneously traditional and high tech with its TGV, Minitel and Look bicycles. It was a time when Britain was going through one of its periodic love affairs with the old enemy. The English were buying up the Dordogne and coming back with crème de cassis and pineau des charentes. Most of all, they were reading Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence.

For some reason I had never read it until I picked up a copy in our local secondhand bookshop last month. In the fly leaf someone had written "To my dear mother-in-law (to be!) with much love from Geraldine April 1992." It's an uncanny experience experiencing it for the first time because it felt like I'd read it before. I think that's because Mayle inspired so many imitators. If A Year in Provence seems clichéd it's because, to some extent, Mayle was inventing the clichés of the whimsical slice of French life complete with stock cast of amusing rustics.