Caesar’s Vast Ghost – Aspects of Provence –

“For more than thirty years the world-famous writer Lawrence Durrell has lived in Provence, that magical wedge of land in southern France that has been the scene of so much rich and varied history. …

Durrell clearly loves Provence and savors it as perhaps only an adopted son can. His is not a guidebook, though readers will find here information and countless intriguing morsels unavailable in any tourist handbook. Nor is it a writer’s journal, though it preserves memories and cameos from the author’s intimate knowledge of the place and people. It is rather a letter to posterity, capturing the essential spirit of this ancient, enchanting land, watered by a great river, and the extraordinary array of warriors, historians philosophers, troubadours, popes, and poets who constitute its human history through the centuries. …”