The Good Life France Magazine Autumn 2016 | Page 72

Where was your first visit to France?

Paris, or Maisons-Lafitte to be more precise. I was born in the UK but christened in the Anglican Church of Maisons-Lafitte, because my father was in the navy and was stationed at NATO, when its headquarters were just outside Paris. OK, so I don’t remember anything about it, but my parents retained a special admiration for France from that time, I think, and passed it on to me. When I was aged about 10 (i.e. in about 1964), we went caravanning in Brittany. Baguettes seemed fabulously exotic back then – and I am convinced they really were much better than they are today: fatter, more crusty, more oily and luscious. To walk into a boulangerie before breakfast was to enter a different world of smells and skills and quality. We went to the Fête des Filets Bleus at Concarneau where I was enchanted by the Breton hats and sensed the sustaining power of living folklore tradition. I still treasure the pottery that we bought at Quimper.

What are your two favourite places in France and why?

Paris. What it is about Paris?

I immediately feel more alive there. Maybe it’s because Parisians live life on the streets – they have to because their apartments are all so tiny. My Parisian friends are endlessly challenging: art, music, food, literature. They like to take me to out-of-the-way places – such as the Maison de Balzac, or the room where Van Gogh died in Auvers-sur-Oise.

Ile de Ré. My family have had a holiday house there since 1998. It is of course, famously beautiful, with its little white villages garlanded with hollyhocks and their wonderful markets, the cycle paths, the salt marshes and the oyster farms, and the silvery Atlantic light and the beaches. Simple timeless pleasures – almost the France of my childhood memories…

Interview with a Francophile

Travel writer and author Antony Mason reveals his favourite French towns and places to visit...