The English novelist and journalist Herbert George (H. G.) Wells was best known for science fiction novels such as The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds, and for his many social novels such as Kipps and The History of Mr Polly.  His long association with the Côte d’Azur centred mostly in the countryside around Grasse between the two world wars.

Ted Jones offers an overview of the various conferences and exhibitions held around the world in 2006 to celebrate the centennial of Graham Greene, author of among other novels The Third Man and Brighton Rock. Conferences and exhibitions were held around the world in 2006 to celebrate the centennial of Graham Greene, author of among others The Third Man and Brighton Rock, who was born a hundred years ago this month.

Ted Jones gives us a glimpse into the short life of New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield who came to Bandol in 1915, grieving the death of her brother on the Western Front and later moved to Menton in 1920. The New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield came to Bandol in 1915, grieving the death of her brother on the Western Front. The Villa Pauline, where she wrote Prelude, still stands overlooking the Renecros beach. Like her friend D. H. Lawrence a decade later, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was to haemorrhage her way along the entire length of the Côte d’Azur.

The French Riviera, the sun-drenched south-eastern corner of France squeezed between the southern Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, has been a magnet for writers for seven centuries. Early in the 14th century, the exiled Florentine poet Dante passed through and wrote of its vertiginous mountains in his Inferno. Since then, generations of literary migrants have followed.

The Cap Ferrat dangles like an earring from the Riviera coastline, its shores adorned with sumptuous villas. In the early years of the 20th century many of them were owned by King Leopold II of Belgium. In 1926 one of them, the Villa Mauresque (Moorish Villa), which had been built to house the King’s personal priest (Leopold’s nocturnal frolics required convenient access to a doctor and a confessor), was bought by the English novelist and playwright, W. Somerset Maugham.

It was to be his home and refuge for the next 40 years: when his lawyer suggested that he put the villa in his daughter’s name to avoid estate duties, he said, ‘Thank you, I’ve read King Lear.’

Jean-Paul Sartre: Existential Hero

Jean-Paul Sartre, the French novelist, playwright and philosopher, was born in Paris a hundred years ago, on June 21, 1905. He was best known for his advocacy of Existentialism - a much-debated philosophy proclaiming total freedom of the individual human being within the constraints of rationality.