Riviera Dreaming

Love and War on the Côte d'Azur

Riviera Dreaming – Love and War on the Côte d'Azur tells the story of expatriate life on the French Riviera in the first part of the last century – from two decades of privileged indulgence to the tragedy of the Second World War. This the true story of Barry Dierks, a young American architect from Pittsburgh, who arrived in Paris in1921 and fell in love with France. With his partner, an ex-officer in the British Army, he built a white, flat-roofed Modernist masterpiece that rested on the rocks below the Esterel and above the shores of the Mediterranean. They called it Le Trident. From the moment it was built, it captivated the Riviera. As commissions for more villas flooded in, Barry Dierks and Eric Sawyer, 'those two charmers', flourished at the heart of Riviera society. Over the years, Dierks would build or remodel over 70 of the Riviera's most recognisable villas for clients ranging from Somerset Maugham's Villa Mauresque and Jack Warner's Villa Aujourd'hui to the Marquess of Cholmondeley's Villa Le Roc, and Maxine Elliott's Château de l'Horizon, later the home of Aly Khan and Rita Hayworth. Riviera Dreaming tells the dazzling story of the lives, loves and adventures that played out behind the walls of these glamorous houses and provides an unparalleled portrait of life on the Cote d'Azur at the height of the Jazz Age. When France fell and was occupied by the Germans most of the expatriates left, but Barry and Eric stayed on, their subsequent adventures proving their courage and love of France.