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…
In less that two weeks time, 8th March, it will be the publication date for the paperback of THE LOST GIRL. I have already written here on our lovely HG site about the inspiration for the modern half of the story, which is partially set over the weekend of Friday 13th November 2015 when a…
I have just returned from a brief stay in Palermo and the western coast of Sicily. Autumn at the heart of the Mediterranean can hardly be bettered. The grape harvests have been completed, the olives are soon to picked and the weather is usually absolutely splendid. I first visited Sicily in 2005. This trip kept…
In just a few days time, my new novel THE LOST GIRL will be published. I have already written on my HG blogs that the story is set in two time zones: post WWII in France and 2015 Paris and includes a few flashbacks to London in the 90s. The Paris 2015 sections take place…
These photos were taken by Bruno Barbey who was a twenty-five-year-old photographer in ’68 and a superb visual chronicler of the events of May 1968. He wrote later, “I went with Cartier-Bresson to buy helmets to protect us from the stones, but with them we couldn’t use our Leicas.’ It is always an exciting moment…
I wrote this for the History Girls blog over two months ago. It was posted today… Planting olive trees in the West Bank : http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-tree-of-peace-by-carol-drinkwater.html Carol
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…
