Portraits of France is part memoir, part journalism, part history, and part gastronomic adventure. From a rustic chateau where Lafayete was born, to a lung busting mountain bike race, from Abelard and Heloise to a lost concentration camp in the Pyrenees, best selling author Robert Daley's insightful book is an intensely personal tour of the history and culture of a France not found in guidebooks. Here you will find the Pontacs, who for five generations dominated Bordeaux, and the Sansons, public executioners for six generations, and Charles Wells, the original "man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo," and Grace Kelly, who, it could be said, saved Monte Carlo from bankruptcy. Here is Verdun, the terrible battle that ruined France, and the story of how the "fabulous" Riviera came to be, the stories of Lourdes, and of the perfume capital, Grasse, and much much more.
