I am delighted to announce the paperback publication of Love and War in the Pyrenees. It has a splendid new cover, as background the sumptuously coloured Catalan fabric made in St Laurent de Cerdans, the village that first inspired the book. Author Kate Mosse has graced it with a recommendation. The hardback published last year was well received and I will add the reviews to the website. But here are a few excerpts that I am proud to repeat:- The Jewish Chronicle called it “a quiet triumph of historical reconstruction.” The Yorkshire Post wrote, “It is important that Rosemary Bailey’s investigative work reaches as wide an audience as possible…stories are told fluently un Bailey’s fluid, evocative prose, in which historical facts merge seamlessly with travel memoirs and personal recollections.”

But the best part of writing a book is the reaction from readers themselves and I thank all those who have taken the trouble to contact me; writing letters, sending emails via my website, even turning up at the door. Several have contributed thoughtful reviews to Amazon. Most moving has been the response from people who were there, for whom this was their story. They have been obliged to read it in English, often a struggle, and I hope soon for a French translation. One of my characters, Dr Henri Goujon, who was in the Resistance at the age of 17 in the Pyrenees Orientales, said he had sat up all night reading it with an English dictionary at his side. He told me I had given a truthful authentic account, and above all, one that was neutral. It is true that the more I wrote about the French experience of the war the less I felt in a position to judge.

In some cases I have helped illuminate the history further for them, more often they are adding to my knowledge; the English Quakers in the South of France now keen to reconstruct their own story, to find out more about the work their modest forbears did in the camps; the daughter of concentration camp victims offering me their letters; the mysterious skeletons found buried in Andorra, probably killed by renegade passeurs; the Spanish doctor trying to find out more about his grandfather who had helped Spanish refugees escape across the Pyrenees; the teacher who recalled his early years in the Ariège, the sweets offered by German soldiers, “You recaptured my childhood,” he told me; Jean Kohn, the American soldier who had been parachuted in to aid the Resistance and whom I finally met in Paris. Many stories that of course I wish I had been able to incorporate in the book, but it is in the nature of such a subject that they will emerge only afterwards. Thus one becomes part of a larger pattern, contributing to a jigsaw puzzle that will continue to be the work of many hands.

Bronte Country. Haworth Cemetery.

Returning to Yorkshire last week, the names began to reverberate from distant memory; Hebden Bridge, Wensleydale, Ilkley Moor, Whitby. I could hear my father’s long Northern vowels again, and recall his ringing sermons. From Hell, Hull and Halifax…” was a great joke between Walter and his non-conformist buddies. But only now have I discovered that it was a 17^th century thieves’ litany - Hull because there was a notorious gaol there, and Halifax because of its famous gibbet, a precursor of the guillotine though with the curious distinction of being operated with a rope which all could grasp, a fair administration of rough justice. Very Yorkshire, perhaps. I went there on a trip with the British Guild of Travel Writers and anticipated the visit with curiosity, never having visited the county of my birth as a tourist. They used to call it “God’s own county,” and remain as proud of it as ever. But for me it was like visiting a different country, more foreign now than France. Industrial has become post-industrial with some noted successes, the 1853 gallery at Saltaire, a huge mill now home to David Hockney’s paintings, the Deep aquarium in Hull, the textile mills turned into luxurious eco-spas.

But it was in the enduring landscape that I felt once again at home; the elemental beauty of the moors, rushing waters, undulating valleys stitched with rugged stone walls and scattered with hardy black-faced Wensleydale sheep. Most of all the wild skies moving with clouds above. I grew up with plenty of sky.

In the end it was the artists and writers we encountered that made sense of it all. Of course, that’s what they are for. One of our first visits after the splendours of York, the great Minster, the medieval streets and walls, was to the Yorkshire Sculpture park. There among the massive Henry Moores which looked so solidly embedded in the landscape and Andy Goldsworthy’s sculptural sheep fold, we saw the Deer Shelter skyspace, a permanent installation by James Turrell. Inside the 19^th century brick shelter he has created an interior space with a square cut out for the sky. That is it. You watch the sky. It may change. You may change. It was only afterwards I discovered that he was a Quaker. His grandmother had explained their philosophy thus; “go inside to greet the light.” Turrell is also a keen air pilot – apparently he and his celestial chums call the rest of us, “ground-pounders.”

Driving through the Yorkshire Wolds towards Hull, through scenes recently painted by Hockney as he travelled between Bridlington, where his mother was ill and Wetherby where his old friend, Jonathan Silver, was dying, he found solace in the trees, silhouetted along the horizon of the hills, or flanking the roadsides in a narrowing perspective that foxed our photographers. Hockney said that returning to Yorkshire had been a revelation, “It led me back to the land. I realized you could [only] paint the landscape, because you can’t photograph the landscape – you can’t get space in it.” The trees, he said were a metaphor for him of the tension between the life force and gravity.

We saw the birthplace of Ted Hughes at Mythomwold, a humble house of soot blackened York stone, and I returned again to Birthday Letters, the book of poems published after his death which explores his relationship with Sylvia Plath with such sensitivity and pain that he must have carried somewhere within him always. And we saw Plath’s grave too in the graveyard of Heptonstall. Why was she buried there, this tormented American, on top of the Yorkshire moors? The name Hughes on the gravestone is fixed in bronze to prevent the Plath pilgrims chiselling it off.

But of course it was the Brontes that did it for me. I felt most in harmony with place and past at Haworth, bleak and grim as it is. Best visited in wind and rain and quite out of season. Jane Eyre was the first grown-up novel I read, aged maybe 10, and it so captured my imagination. The Brontes were all about imagination, they had nothing else, stuck in that cold, remote parsonage between village and wilderness. In front of them the church and always the graveyard, the inevitably of death which came all too soon to all of them, then behind the house the wide scape of empty moorland and sky. Liberty was always Emily’s watchword.

And then another memory of my father rises up, of him suddenly stopping on a moorland walk, and pointing to the heavens. “Wait, listen to the skylark!” And we would strain to hear what he heard soaring high in the sky above us.

Click here for the sound of trumpets. Only joking. I can barely remember how to upload a photo let alone design in musical accompaniment. Anyway I am very proud to announce two awards. Two! The British Guild of Travel Writers- a very prestigious organisation, naturellement- voted my new book, Love and War in the Pyrenees, the best narrative travel book of 2008. Thanks, guys. It is hugely appreciated. You slave away alone for years, with some feedback from readers which is very very welcome, but appreciation from one’s peers is sweetest of all. And my article The Cheats’ Guide to the Pyrenees, which was published in The Observer in June, was runner-up for Newspaper article of the year in the French Tourist Office annual awards for 2008. 

I recently went on a press trip to the Champagne-Ardennes region of France, a combination of champagne and cemeteries which was better than it sounds. The champagne was excellent, a welcome respite after the various war sites we visited, from both First and Second World Wars. The entire region has been a battlefront for centuries and the scars are deep. We saw an entire German military camp in the process of being reconstructed,and several deeping moving memorials.

Most fascinating was the new Charles de Gaulle Memorial Museum in Colombey-les-deux Eglises, due to be opened October 10^th. From the June 18^th call to Resistance in 1940 to the final caricatures grafitti-ed on the streets of Paris in 1968, de Gaulle is undoubtedly the most famous Frenchman of the 20^th century. Every town in France has its avenue Charles de Gaulle and now he has his own museum, a rare phenomenon for any famous individual other than artists. The Mémorial is in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises, a small village in Haute Marne, one of the smallest departments of France. Here in Eastern France is where de Gaulle lived for much of his life. He didn’t come from there, he came from Lille further north; he chose Colombey. An army man, married with four children, including a youngest daughter with Down’s syndrome, he sought a modest retreat from the world. The house he bought in 1934, La Boisserie, still belongs to the family. You can visit though, stroll through the gardens, and see the splendid library and bureau de Gaulle designed for himself with three windows and a view stretching 62 kilometres distant.

The new museum nestles into the hillside opposite the village and Le Boisserie. The hill is already dominated by a vast marble cross of Lorraine- which de Gaulle himself predicted would be built there after his death. The cross, with its distinctive double arms, was originally brought back from the Crusades, and was chosen by the Free French in London as the symbol of Resistance. Like the CND symbol, its graphic simplicity ensured its recognition and survival.

The museum, funded by the Fondation Charles de Gaulle and the Conseil General of Haute Marne with additional finance from national and European sources, has cost 20m euros. It was designed by architects Jacques Millet and Jean-Côme Chilou, also responsible for the Memorial Museum of Caen, and obeys modern architectural trends; almost a third is tucked into the mountain side, part of it with an eco-conscious grass roof. Thus the place retains its character and is not eclipsed by the building. A grand staircase leads up to the cross and a broad terrace offers an almost 180 degree view of the countryside. This is de Gaulle’s France, an unchanging landscape of gentle valleys and forests, a green and beautiful country worth fighting for. “He mirrored the landscape and the landscape mirrored him.,” says one of the homilies write large on vast glass panels as you enter.

The museum design itself is state of the art with lots of fancy lighting, music, photographs, films and recordings to listen to, a reconstructed First World War trench, even a cobblestone floor for the 1968 Evénements finale, after which de Gaulle bowed out. It is not all about de Gaulle, it is the world through de Gaulle and I found it a fascinating journey through the 20^th century. And it does work. The First World War, de Gaulle’s writing subsequently about army strategy and his prescient analysis that tanks were needed and not the Maginot Line, to the Fall of France which resulted, the Occupation and the Resistance are all movingly evoked. The historical perspective is up to date treating honestly with delicate subjects like the French treatment of the Jews. The relevant text describes the progress of Petain’s Vichy government from “dishonest compromise, equivocation and dishonourable actions, leading to alignment with Nazi wishes.”

De Gaulle’s role is honoured of course, his arrogance and prickly relationships with other leaders left largely unexplored, but happily the ensemble falls short of hagiography. His triumphal return to Paris in 1944 is celebrated, though the text concedes that after that, as de Gaulle would have calculated, the allies could no longer dispute his legitimacy.

Most of all the Museum celebrates the achievement of Europe, the first stages of reconciliation between France and Germany. All the texts are in German, French and English. And though it is a unstinting tribute to one patriotic Frenchman what endured for me was a moving sense of the deep necessity for European unity, The museumm will be officially inaugurated by President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. 50 years after the first meeting between de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer on the steps of Le Boisserie. Highly recommended!

Sadly the espadrille factory had closed down when we were last there, unable to compete with Chinese imports, but this time I was thrilled to find that two young women had re-opened it, and were making both traditional espadrilles, and a range of colourful modern versions.  Bon courage!

The last days of summer. Everyone seems to have left. The rentrée is upon us, the shops full of school satchels and pens. My son has bought himself a new French agenda, diary, out of habit, though now he will be going to an English school. The difference will be interesting. I am sure.

But truly this is the best time of the year in the Pyrenees, end of August beginning of September. A golden time. Grapes ripening, Haystacks in the fields. People chopping logs. Mostly the air is still, the sun warm and you can still swim. We don’t have a pool- and I realised after many years at Corbiac how glad I was since I would have spent most of my time supervising other people’s children. What a responsibility. Not to mention the cleaning. (Oh for a pool boy!) But I love swimming. I have been very fortunate to be able to stay in my friend Martha’s house while ours was being renovated, and she has installed a swimming pond, with water-lilies, surrounded by plants and trees. It is a sublime place to swim, incredibly tranquil, a green swim. But I love to swim in the sea too, a blue swim, a swim for pure pleasure. I like to lie in the waves, to be massaged by the sea. There is also an excellent pool in Prades, nice and big for proper long exercise swims. Sadly it closes at the end of this week, la rentrée again, though there are weeks more of sun, warm enough to swim outside.

Writing non-fiction about real people has its pitfalls – (Fay Weldon said to me many years ago, “Just write fiction, it is much easier, you can make it all up!” but that is advice I seem to have ignored) Each book I have written has resulted in a reaction from someone which has been quite unexpected. So this time I have been very happy thus far to receive positive calls and emails from some of the people I have written about. Especially since most of them don’t really read English. In particular two of the elderly men I interviewed, one Henri Melich, a Spanish Republican refugee who fled to France after the Spanish Civil War in 1939 at age 12, and then joined the French Resistance, aged 16. He was kind enough to give me his own account of his experiences and was so pleased I had used them.

Another of my characters, Dr Henri Goujon, who was in the Resistance a the age of 17 in the Pyrenees Orientales, said he had sat up all night reading it with a dictionary at his side. He told me I had given a truthful authentic account, and above all, one that was neutral. It is true that the more I wrote about the French experience of the war the less I felt in a position to judge. We have only to ask ourselves what we would we have done in the same circumstances, had Britain been invaded. I recently read a very fine book, Resistance by Owen Sheers which imagines the Germans invading and coming to a remote Welsh valley, and the inevitable challenges and compromises that resulted. I hope you will read my book and let me know what you think.