Travel in Provence is not, and never has been, all roses and orange-blossom, although the scents of both these flowers are wafted down the heat-locked streets of Avignon, and mingle with the smell of garlic, oil, bad drains and warm red wine.

A picnic is one of the most difficult meals in the world to manage well; to make it not merely enjoyable but even decent demands considerable intelligence and taste.

How many of us have not felt a certain sneaking satisfaction, towards the end of a long day of sightseeing, at finding the penultimate chapel, or the final museum, firmly, irrevocably, shut?

This is a gloriously idiosyncratic little book, zooming around the landscape of south-eastern France apparently at random, full of witty put-downs of earlier travellers in Provence and disparaging remarks about the way the French look after their cultural heritage, and sometimes written from absurd heights of cultural superiority, but it does keep coming back down to earth to show us how much there is to love and appreciate in the scenery and culture of the region and in the lives of some of Pope-Hennessy's heroes who have lived there — in particular van Gogh, Frédéric Mistral, Gounod, Cézanne and Zola, as well as the philosophe Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues.

Like all really good travel books, this one contains next to no useful information (and whatever it does contain must be 70 years out of date), is a constant delight to read, and makes you want to go and see the places described for yourself. Excellent. ( )

Map of Provence endpapers shown. ExLib. ( )