In France Profound (Used Hardcover) - T. D. Allman

From the National Book Award-longlisted author of Finding Florida , a sparkling, sweeping chronicle of the author’s adopted homeland in “Deep France,” from its prehistoric caves to its royal dynastic struggles to today’s colorful characters in his beloved mountain town  In 1990, Timothy Allman purchased an 800-year-old house in the tiny mountain village of Lauzerte in southwestern France. He has lived there part of every year since, amidst the deep history of the town and region. Indeed, the history of France can be viewed from the perspective of Lauzerte and its surrounding area, just as Allman, from his window, can see Lauzerte unfold before him in the Place des Cornieres, where he watches performances of the opera Tosca and the passing racers of the Tour de France, and each Saturday buys produce from “Fred, the Foie Gras Guy.” The fortitude of a good friend leads him to uncover the life and complex dynastic struggles of Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose lands neighboring Lauzerte symbolize the long-held English claims on France that lingered even into the 18 th century. He discovered the town’s remarkable progressive charter issued in 1241 by Raymond VI of Toulouse, which enshrined human rights and due process in its 51 articles, and documents the many conflicts that have swirled in the region, from the century-long attempt by the Catholic Church to wipe out the “heretical” Cathars; to France’s own 16 th -century Wars of Religion; to World War II, during which Lauzerte was part of Nazi-occupied Vichy. In prose as crystalline as his view to the Pyrenees on a clear day, Allman animates Lauzerte and its surrounding communities—Cahors, Montcuq, Montauban—all ever in thrall to the magnetic force of Paris. Witness to so much over the centuries, his house comes alive as well, from its wine-cellar cave to the roof where he wages battle with pigeons, to the life lessons it conveys. “The onward march of history, my House keeps demonstrating, never takes a rest,” he observes, pulling us vividly into his orbit.

1218SR