I have been focusing quite a bit on war recently so I thought for this month’s blog I would choose a subject that is closer to home and of a lighter aspect. A love story. This true story is set along the Côte d’Azur, the Blue Coast, but it began in the north of France in Lille.
Miró fountainIn 1908 in the town of Hazebrouck near Lille a boy, Aimé, was born to a railway employee and his wife, Monsieur et Madame Maeght. At the outbreak of WWI, Monsieur Maeght set off for the war never to return. Worse, the family home was destroyed. Aimé, now six years old, along with his mother and three siblings, was evacuated to the Gard in the south by the Red Cross. Aimé was bright and he was passionate about art, poetry and music. After a brilliant school career, he attended art school in Nimes, but he decided he could not pursue his artistic ambitions because he had the responsibility of his family to consider. He turned instead to the printing trade and decided to study lithography. Once he had gained his engraver’s diploma, he had no difficulty finding himself a job with a printer in Cannes. He was twenty-one years old with, it is reported, “spades of charm”. He joined the choir in the church in the Suquet.
Within a year, he had met a local girl, Marguerite Devaye. She was the daughter of wealthy trades people. They married the following year. He was twenty-three. She, nineteen. In 1930, Adrien, their first son was born. Their lives were blessed. Aimé was bursting with ambition and plans. In 1932, whilst still empoyed at the same printer’s, he opened his own shop near to the famous seafront, La Croisette, and christened it Arte. He began exhibiting paintings in the window. Soon, Aimé’s print shop was also a gallery. Pierre Bonnard, who lived in the…
Any author reading this blog who is two weeks away from publication will know the nail-biting angst I am suffering. Those days leading up to the release of a new work… So, I won’t describe any of the emotions that are soaring through my body right now. We all know them. Instead, I thought I’d…
Metz is a city in the northeast of France, Le Grand Est, capital of the Lorraine region, and one that I had never visited before last weekend. It sits alongside the winding Moselle river and is surprisingly inspiring. I was in town because my husband, Michel Noll, was inaugurating a film festival. The festival, titled…
France has a coastline of approximately 7330 kilometres. Much of it is magnificent and many of those kilometres are uninhabited, wild even. I am a sea baby. The old adage that being by the sea does you good, clears your lungs and regenerates your system is, in my opinion, true and the French have elevated…
I won’t pretend otherwise. This February is proving to be a very bittersweet month. As I mentioned in last month’s blog, my new novel THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER was published on 11th February with a few nice events lined up by Michael Joseph/Penguin to launch it. A special and exciting moment for me as this new…
How do we find the stories, the ideas for our novels or how do they find us? I am always on the lookout for ideas, for seeds that might grow like flowers into fully-realised stories. We writers are always digging about for nuggets. Magpies, we are, looking for what shines. Sometimes, the work involves weeks,…
Due to Covid and work restraints, I hadn’t been back home to Ireland since the beginning of the pandemic. It meant that my trip planned for late November of this year (2023) was intended to be a special one. I was excited about it. I was planning to spend a few days alone in the…