Blog

Patron saints of France: Joan of Arc, St Martin, Ste Clothilde, Ste Therese.

  Interested in France ?  Book your holiday near La Rochelle. www.seasidefrance.com It is St George’s Day … made me think about the patron saints of France, of which there are four. The first, as we know, is St Joan of Arc, who I wrote about briefly a week or two ago:- Click here for […]

Posted 12 years ago

The Grand Canyon, Nevada, Las Vegas.

  I didn’t even try to sketch the Grand Canyon.  This is partly because it was cold, partly because I didn’t have my sketch pad, but mostly because I felt my mediocre little sketches would only insult it. There is already a huge amount written about the Grand Canyon, so I won’t go in to […]

Posted 12 years ago

Saint Clothilde – history in France, a French saint.

Yesterday I was looking at a sketch I did for one of my children’s history classes when he was little (the school had no text books**) and that in turn made me look up Saint Clothilde.  There is a dirth of information about her, and what little there is was written by Gregoire de Tours […]

Posted 12 years ago

Our guest blogger today is Charles Thuo from Kenya.

A FAIR LOOK AT  KENYA – an article contributed by Charles Thuo of Kenya. Kenya is indeed a beautiful country in the heart of Africa. It is a country rich in wildlife as well as diverse culture and heritage. Apart from Kenya being known for its amazing sceneries & tourist attractions, it is also reckoned […]

Posted 12 years ago

Trip reports, hotel & book reviews and so on … from the point of view of the client

The aim behind reviews is somewhat forgotten in the modern frenzy for putting things on the internet.  We now have a voice that can carry all over the world, and there is a good side to this, and a bad. The aim, when all this started, was so that we could warn people if we […]

Posted 12 years ago

Trip reports, hotel & book reviews and so on … from the point of view of the trade.

Over the winter I have received a fair few e-mails from owners of hotels, restaurants and villas, authors of books, owners of small businesses, and even a composer!   The e-mails had two common factors running through them and that was about black-listing people and about people who write nasty reports.  So, I think the […]

Posted 12 years ago

Trip of a Lifetime – by Maurice Chapman

Here is an amusing little tale from a friend, an example of the good old British spirit!   Concord to New York, 2 nights in the infamous Waldorf Astoria and sailing back to Southampton on the QE2!  What could possibly go wrong? We left Bristol and drove up the M4 to Heathrow and managed to […]

Posted 12 years ago

Victor Hugo continued – Demain, des l’Aube. Great French writers.

After I had finished yesterday’s item about Victor Hugo, I thought I should have included his lovely poem, written just after Leopoldine died.  The translation is my own – I daresay there is an official translation somewhere – with apologies to all concerned.  (There should be a grave accent on that e in the title […]

Posted 12 years ago

French writers, part 5. Victor Hugo. Great French men.

I wasn’t going to write anything about Victor Hugo, judging him to be sufficiently well-known, but this morning something on the internet made me change my mind.  It was a discussion about theatre and somebody had stated:-  “les Miserables“, meaning “the miserable ones”   It does not.  Les miserables means “the poor”.  And that in […]

Posted 12 years ago

French writers, part 4. Voltaire. Famous Frenchmen.

A few million years ago, when I was a student, I read “Candide”.  I can’t remember whether I read it in French or in English, but I do remember commenting that I thought it was a really stupid story, and getting in to considerable trouble with my Voltaire-loving lecturer.  I started leafing through some Voltaire […]

Posted 12 years ago

Books now available on Amazon:

A Call From France
French Sand
Kefani: An African Childhood
The Man With Green Fingers
Saying Nothing