Riviera Dreaming: Love and War on the Cote d'Azur

Description

In 1926 Barry Dierks, a young American architect, arrived in Paris 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, with views across 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 design and build 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 Chateau 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.

Maureen Emerson lived in Provence for 20 years, where she worked as a local co-ordinator for CBS and NBC at media festivals in Cannes. During her years in Provence, Maureen became enthralled with the stories of those expatriates who lived on the Riviera in the 1920s and 1930s and how World War II affected their lives. Her first book on the Riviera, Escape to Provence, was published in 2008.

This well-written book is packed with history and glamorous insider stories of the rich and famous, contrasted with the hardships of local residents living under German occupation during World War II. Meticulously researched by long-term resident Maureen Emerson it makes a riveting read; perfect summer holiday reading. Bet you won't be able to put it down. -- Mary S. Lovell, author of The Mitford Girls Maureen Emerson has created a fascinating account of the South of France in times of glorious peace and hideous war, telling the stories of those who made their homes there. She evokes a particular generation in this wonderful book. -- Hugo Vickers