French Lessons

1939-06-14 – 2018-01-18

Peter Mayle was a British businessman turned author who moved to France in the 1980s. Born in Brighton, Sussex, the youngest of three children, Mayle and his parents moved to Barbados in the aftermath of World War II, where his father was transferred as a Colonial Office employee. Mayle returned to England after leaving school at 16 in Barbados. He relocated from Devon to the Lubéron, southern France, in the late 80s but his plans to write a novel were overtaken by an account of life in his new environment. This resulted in *A Year in Provence*, chronicling his first year as a British expatriate in Ménerbes, a village in the southern département Vaucluse. *A Year in Provence* (1989) was the …