Caesar's Vast Ghost, Aspects of Provence

Provence, where Lawrence Durrell has lived for 30 years, is the motif of this book. It offers the traveller intriguing things they will not find elsewhere and preserves memories and cameos of the Midi and its people. The book aims to capture the essential spirit of the land and those of its warriors, historians, philosophers and poets. The Romans gave form to Provence and Durrell looks at the road systems, the Pont du Gard, the Maison Carrée, the arenas, theatres, arches, bridges, memorials and towns. There are chapters on the author's enthusiasms such as bullfighting, the mediaeval Courts of Love and the troubadours, the meals and strange drinks, burial customs, coins and fountains and the favours of Cunegonde. 19 of the author's poem are included. - With 40 colour photographs by Harry Peccinotti.

Lawrence Durrell was born in 1912 in India. He attended the Jesuit College at Darjeeling and St Edmund's School, Canterbury. His first literary work, The Black Book, appeared in Paris in 1938. His first collection of poems, A Private Country, was published in 1943, followed by the three Island books: Prospero's Cell, Reflections on a Marine Venus, about Rhodes, and Bitter Lemons, his account of life in Cyprus. Durrell's wartime sojourn in Egypt led to his masterpiece, The Alexandria Quartet, which he completed in southern France where he settled permanently in 1957. Between the Quartet and The Avignon Quintet he wrote the two-decker Tunc and Nunquam. His oeuvre includes plays, a book of criticism, translations, travel writing, and humorous stories about the diplomatic corps. Caesar's Vast Ghost, his reflections on the history and culture of Provence, including a late flowering of poems, appeared a few days before his death in Sommieres in 1990.