Perfume From Provence

Winifred Fortescue was an actress who rubbed shoulders with the likes of Jerome K. Jerome and George Bernard Shaw when she married Sir John Fortescue, the King’s librarian and archivist and famous historian of the British Army. Tempted by a better climate and the cheaper cost of living, they left England and found a stone house amid olive groves, high in the hills above Nice. Almost at once they were bewitched by the landscape and especially their garden—delightful terraces of vines, wild flowers, roses, and lavender—and by the charming, warm-hearted, and wily Provençals. Winifred’s witty account of life with stonemasons, craftsmen, and gardeners as they extend the house is an enchanting read.