France as my Inspiration, by Carol Drinkwater

                                       The famous green boxes used by the Parisian bouquinistes

                                         They have been designated a World Heritage Site status

I am deep in work at present, lost in the brambly mire of editorial notes on my still untitled novel due for publication in 2017. As well, I am also preparing or rather allowing to gestate the novel I am about to begin writing. I am not a Plotter. I start with grainy images of characters and places. Once I have a first instinct about what these people, this particular character - usually a woman – wants, I begin to trail her, as it were. What period am I traversing? Where are we? What is at stake for HER? The questions are endless. It goes back to my drama school days when I was taught to build the inner life of my character, the role I was rehearsing. "Get to know everything about her".

Agents and publishers like material they can sell, they can establish you with. In my case, in one broad word, it is FRANCE.

My six memoirs set on our Olive Farm in the South of France became international best sellers. They established me, as it were, as one of those Brits who had upped sticks and moved abroad, to France. A rather simplified summation of the facts, but never mind.
My agent is happy that he can sell the combination of moi and France.

But no one wants to write the same book over and over so I am always looking for new approaches, different angles for stories. And this is great fun.

My latest novel, published this year, THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER, is set on a vineyard overlooking the Mediterranean somewhere not far from  Cannes or St Raphael. There are also several scenes set in Paris. But at the heart of the book, where its dark family secret lies, I take the reader back to the last days of the Algerian War of Independence in 1962. The fallout when war is in its dying throes. The people who are affected by the retreat. Sometimes the characters might be victims, sometimes perpetrators. Right at the core of THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER is a choice, a decision taken when no other direction seemed possible.

The research involved a trip to Algeria – an expansive, varied and very beautiful country with many layers of its own fascinating history. I was fortunate because I had recently returned from a four week trip there for research on a previous book, a travel book: THE OLIVE TREE.

So powerful were the images and history of the country that they stayed with me; they haunted me until I decided to use them for THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER. The story took root within me and would not go away until I wrote it. I think it’s a fair claim that this is a good situation for a writer. The emptiness of no inspiration and the silent question: what on earth am I going to write about next? is not what any of us wants.

So, when I am inching towards that empty stage where, somewhere there, the next story is waiting to be told, I look about me in earnest, on the hunt as it were, for spoors, threads.

I make trips to brocantes – junk and antique stores - which in any case is a form of relaxation for me. I am searching for objects that might kickstart my imagination. I visit galleries and stare into paintings. I watch old movies.

A few weeks ago I drove to the edges of the Champagne region to visit a huge jumble yard; one I know quite well. It is so sprawling that usually I only stroll about the Art Deco or Art Nouveau sections or the garden furniture. But on this occasion I was trying to solve a writing problem and so just meandered about not really looking at anything. I found myself in the book section. This is a very fusty, dark room where lorry loads of books that have been collected from House Emptying expeditions are stacked in piles. There is no order to it; you just have to rummage. There I found in excellent condition a biography of Francois Truffaut, a director I greatly admire. It was a snip at 2 euros.

                                                           A bouquiniste's treasure trove

It took me back to an era of modern France that has always fascinated me. France in the late 60s and the 70s. An evocative period in which to set a novel. Last week, I was wandering the bouquiniste stalls in Paris and I spotted a rare black and white magazine hanging from a clothes peg on one of the stalls on the Left Bank. It was not a snip at 32 euros. Still, I couldn’t resist and bought it. It brought to life through pages of black and white photographs the period when Truffaut was making such films as Fahrenehit 451, Stolen Kisses ...

And so I have found a key, a door into my next novel.

Fascinatingly, an episode from my early past that I had completely forgotten until now was that in 1971 or 1972 I met Truffaut. He would have been about forty. He was in London casting, looking for the lead for the film that won him his Oscar for Best Foreign Film: La Nuit Americaine or Day for Night. I lost out to Jackie Bisset who was given the role. My French, Truffaut decided, was not sufficiently fluent.
And now here I am living in France, living my life in the French language, reading his biography in French. How life turns!

                                                           François Truffaut 1932 - 1984

Truffaut died at the age of fifty-two. Tragically young, but he has left behind him a body of masterpieces. He changed the direction of French cinema and his work acutely chronicles two generations of modern history.
He is buried in Montmartre.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

A vineyard in southern France, by Carol Drinkwater

It is that time of year again. Late September. The season of ‘mellow fruitfulness’. There are no mists here at this time of year in the south of France but there is a great deal of mature sunlight oozing its warm beams for long hour after long hour. I love this time of year and what has been extra special for me this year is that THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER was published last week in paperback.

To celebrate its publication, my husband and I visited one of our local Foire aux vins, a rendezvous for all lovers of good wine where a vast selection of French wines are on offer at slightly reduced prices.

THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER is set, predominantly, on a family-owned vineyard in the south of France. The book opens with the harvest, la vendange.

When I was a student, many of my colleagues would zip off to France or Italy about now and help with the grape-picking. The stories they returned with, along with their healthy sun-kissed cheeks, always made me a little wistful. I was one of those students who couldn’t really afford to travel, (which is possibly why I have been on the move ever since!) I had never visited a vineyard. I didn’t know anything of the back-breaking work, the heat in the fields, the sweet juice staining my fingers. All of these joyous experiences came to me later, and whilst writing on THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER I spent a great deal of time on several vineyards throughout all seasons to learn the entire wine-making process, but I particularly loved being out of doors in the fresh air at harvest-time. As well, I enjoyed the camaraderie that grows out of working with a small thrown-together team. It is all about picking by hand, just as we do with our olives. One of the main reasons for this is that discerning pickers will know to leave the poor fruits alone and not mix them in with top quality fruits.

The moment of when to pick is an ancient art and getting it right is vital to the quality of the wine to come. Most winemakers decide their moment dependent on the sugar and acid levels in the fruit. Weather, too, is an important factor. This becomes clear in THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER when an unpredicted hail storm arrives from nowhere and beats down on the newly-picked grapes, destroying entire baskets of the estate's most cherished variety.

The south of France with its abundance of rosé wines has been capturing the attention of wine connoisseurs the world over. Wine production here in the Midi has come of age, experts are claiming. It is true that until recently it has never been held with the regard given to Burgundy or Bordeaux productions but since Phoenician times it has been an active if not always top-notch business here.

                             The cave where the earliest known winery was located in southern Armenia

I read on Wikipedia that the oldest-known winery, -and judging by the remains excavated there it was a reasonably sophisticated affair - was found in Vayots Dzor, Armenia, and dates back to around 4100 BC. If this were the oldest winery it would date the industry at approximately 6,000 years old, which is at least 1,000 years younger than olive cultivation in the Middle East.

I wonder.

                                     Mosaic with Armenian writing depicting grapes and birds

Georgia was producing wine during the same period as the Armenians and possibly earlier. They discovered wine-making when they buried wild grape juice underground in shallow pits throughout the winter. When the juice was dug up it had fermented. The next step was to sink grape juice in clay vessels with sealed wooden lids and leave these kvevris sometimes for up to fifty years.

                                                         Ancient kvevris in Georgia

The kvevris resemble early amphorae which, from at least Phoenician times, were used to transport liquid produce such as wine or olive oil all around the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians played a vital role all along their maritime trading routes in disseminating both wine and olive knowledge.

                                           Roman amphorae used to transport olive oil or wine

The search for the origins of viticulture is as complex a journey as my own Olive Route expeditions. It is possibly why the history of wine-making fascinates me as much as the olive culture.

                                                       Egyptian wine jars 6th - 4th century BC

I can remember standing in the West Bank on a very sunny February morning planting olive saplings in groves where the old trees had been felled, and looking about me. Unrestricted views in every direction. Palestine. Ancient Palestine. Canaan, Phoenician fields. Israel. On each of these territories wine production has had an impact and that impact has been carried to ports all across the Mediterranean.

                                         An exquisite Greek wine-mixing vessel, from southern France 500 BC

Southern France, the original small port that was founded as Massilia, modern-day Marseille, would have seen the arrival of wine stock and olive trees somewhere around 600 BC. The Phoenicians first or possibly the Phocaean Greeks who came from the Asia Minor coast, from the port-city of Phocaea – today Foca in Turkey. Both peoples would have transported with them cultivation know-how as well as a floating nursery of sorts. The resident Gauls were choosy about what they accepted from these long-distance foreigners, but they did welcome wine. After, came the Romans who planted up vast swathes of the Languedoc, the Mediterranean coast, Provence with vines.

A couple of years ago I was invited to the Robert Mondavi Institute, University of California, Davis, to give a couple of lectures on my Olive Route experiences, embracing both the two travel books and the films. While there I came across a very excellent book, which I thoroughly recommend if the history of viticulture is of interest to you.

                                                    ANCIENT WINE, by Patrick E. McGovern

It is a vast and intoxicating subject, and one I would love to travel to discover further.

THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER, unlike THE OLIVE ROUTE and its sequel THE OLIVE TREE, is a novel. It is full of love, fine food and wines and intrigue. I hope that it is also imbued with my passion for southern France's agricultural past and the region's history.

I leave you with Dionysus, or Bacchus. Such a handsome god in whose company I would enjoy driving a glass of wine.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

Favourite hideaways of mine in Ireland, by Carol Drinkwater

 I have just returned from a memorable trip to Ireland - my semi-adopted homeland because I was actually born in London. My recently-departed mother and all her family were born and bred in County Laios, set in the Midlands of Ireland. The farm her parents spent their hardworking lives running is still in the family and belongs now to two of my cousins. They were a struggling, hardworking Catholic family.
Until 1922, when the Irish Free State came into existence and British rule over Ireland was drawing to its bitter close, Laois was known as Queen's County (a nod to British monarchy).
My mother used to recount to me many stories of local Protestants helping the Catholics and vice-versa (lending one another tractors, or a gallon or two of petrol when rationing during the WWII badly hit their agricultural way of life even though Ireland had chosen a neutral position). She told me that the families of the two faiths lived alongside one another in peace. Of course, this wasn't always the case.

Like most counties in Ireland, Laois has its fair share of grand Georgian or Regency properties built by the Protestant British when they were the landlords of the island while the tenants or farm workers were the less privileged Catholics. 

Ballyfin, considered the most lavish Regency house in Ireland, is an example. It was built in the 1820s on the site of previous luxury manor houses, by Sir Charles Coote and his wife Carolyn. It stayed in the Coote family until the 1920s when it was bought by the Patrician Brothers, a Roman Catholic teaching order. At this stage, Ireland was taking back its independence from the British and the brothers ran Ballyfin as a school right through to the twentieth-first century. In 2002, a decline in vocations, less brothers to run the school, forced them to sell the estate on.

Today, after nine years of restoration by its present owners, a couple from Chicago with Irish connections, it has been transformed into a sumptuous five-star hotel, Ballyfin Demesne, set in some 600 acres of manicured gardens. 

If your budget can run to even a cup of tea there - room rates start from around 850 euros a night - it is worth visiting just to get a sense of its splendour and to imbibe the stories and ghosts from its past. If I were to covet any of it with Big House envy, it would be its magnificent conservatory.

                                                           Ballyfin Regency Manor House

The history of Laois reaches back at least 8,000 years, to pre-Neolithic times when tribes of hunters roamed the forests in search of nuts and berries to supplement their diets. There are several sites and monuments that bear witness to the history of this region from Neolithic times to modern days, and it is claimed that Christianity came to Laois even before Saint Patrick arrived there.

I spent two or three days in the neighbourhood paying tribute to my mother, leaving a lock of her hair at my  grandparents' grave to reunite her with her family and the place of her birth.

We stayed in Offaly at Gloster House, a Georgian mansion built for the Lloyd family in the 1720s.

This house, with a 1960s convent stuck onto its rear, was sold to its present owners, Tom and Mary Alexander in 2001. It was a purchase of love, no doubt about it. The nuns who had run the place as a rest home for rich elderly women and a school in the convent addition at the back had, through lack of funds, allowed the property to fall into a very sorry state of disrepair. I know this first hand because my mother and I took the gate lodge in 2005 as a rental and over the years we became friends with the present owners. We have witnessed the painstaking renovations undertaken. Today, Gloster is both a stunning private residence and can be booked for wedding and birthday events. If you are looking for a location for a very special occasion, I cannot recommend Gloster highly enough. 

                                           Gloster House - Photo taken last week by my husband, Michel Noll

Here is a piece I wrote for my website earlier this year. 

http://www.caroldrinkwater.com/introducing-gloster-house-county-offaly-ireland

           A view of the Slieve Bloom Mountains in Laois where I spent many blissful childhood days 

From Laois and Offaly, we turned southwest to the coast, to Bantry Bay, a picturesque stop along the Wild Atlantic Way.

As I write, this year's West Cork Literary Festival is drawing to its close. I was the first event of the 2016 festival. It was held in the library of magnificent Bantry House overlooking Bantry Bay in West Cork, and I am thrilled to say it was a sold-out event. On Tuesday morning I did a smaller event in the tea rooms at Bantry House. Bantry is also a country house I know quite well. My first stay there was, again with my mother, for my first visit to the West Cork Lit Fest. It rained - 'lashed', as we say in Ireland - from the moment we drove into the fishing town till our departure. Again, my event was at the great house. On that occasion we were also staying in the elegant annexe area the Shelswell-White family use for bed and breakfasts. Mrs Brigitte Shelswell-White was so welcoming, lending us two of her Burberry raincoats (bought in charity shops, she assured us) and wellies, showing us into the private areas of the house, that I have been marked by this place, that visit ever since.

Here is a 'snapshot' history of this property: http://www.bantryhouse.com/bantryhouse/visit-2/history/

Egerton-Shelswell-White, Brigitte's late husband, a much-loved patron of the arts in West Cork, was the eight generation of his family to reside at Bantry. Since his death in 2013, one of his children, of which there are six, Sophie, has taken over the responsibility of management of the estate. No mean feat.

The family continues to host events for both the West Cork Chamber Music Festival and the West Cork Literary festival.

Eimear O'Herlihy, Festival Director, (standing) introducing me. To my left (right as you look at the pic) is Elizabeth Rose Murray who hosted my first event. Elizabeth is also a writer and was appearing at the festival later in the week for her own events.

Here is the jacket of THE HUNGER, a historical novel I wrote for adolescents. It is set in Ireland during the 1845-1849 Irish Potato Famine, published by Scholastic Books

My latest, THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER (the novel I was in Bantry to read from and talk about), is a Summer Special on Kindle e-books. A GREAT deal at £1.99

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-Summer-Carol-Drinkwater-ebook/dp/B016JKY3IE/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_img_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CDB7DDQ00XQWABZ4R68R

Or if you prefer to wait, THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER will be published in paperback on 8th September in UK. In Ireland it was published last week

www.caroldrinkwater.com