The Once Upon a Time World
The Dark and Sparkling Story of the French Riviera
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2.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Chronicling two-hundred years of glamour, intrigue, and hedonism, this rich and vivid history of the French Riviera features a vast cast of characters, from Pablo Picasso and Coco Chanel to Andre Matisse and James Baldwin.
1835, Lord Brougham founded Cannes, introducing bathing and the manicured lawn to the wilds of the Mediterranean coast. Today, much of that shore has become a concrete mass from which escape is an exclusive dream. In the 185 years between, the stretch of seaboard from the red mountains of the Esterel to the Italian border hosted a cultural phenomenon well in excess of its tiny size.
A mere handful of towns and resorts created by foreign visitors - notably English, Russian and American - attracted the talented, rich and famous as well as those who wanted to be. For nearly two centuries of creativity, luxury, excess, scandal, war and corruption, the dark and sparkling world of the Riviera was a temptation for everybody who was anybody. Often frivolous, it was also a potent cultural matrix that inspired the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Coco Chanel, Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, James Baldwin, Catherine Mansfield, Sartre and Stravinsky.
In Once Upon a Time World, Jonathan Miles presents the remarkable story of the small strip of French coast that lured the world to its shores. It is a wild and unforgettable tale that follows the Riviera's transformation from paradise and wilderness to a pollution imperiled concrete jungle.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"For two centuries of opulence, scandal, war and corruption, the Riviera was a temptation," writes historian Miles (The Wreck of the Medusa) in this comprehensive chronicle, which tracks the ups and downs of France's southern coastline across the 19th and 20th centuries. During the Victorian era, the rich and carefree, including Queen Victoria herself, visited the Riviera, shaping places like Nice, Marseilles, and Cannes into indulgent playgrounds. During WWII, it was a strategic location for Axis troops, and many of its art deco landmarks were destroyed by bombings. Following the war, Hollywood discovered the Riviera. From the founding of the Cannes film festival in 1939 to the 1956 marriage of Grace Kelly to the prince of Monaco, Miles traces how the Riviera became the place for movie stars to see and be seen. This period also marked the rise of the mafia in the casinos of Nice and Monaco, a "sunny but shady" criminal underworld. Throughout, Miles focuses on artists (Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso) and writers (Katherine Mansfield, James Baldwin), tracing the impact of the gorgeous seaside on their work and on their personal lives. Stuffed with entrancing details, it's a charming if somewhat dense look at a storied region.
