BOOK REVIEW / Paperbacks: The End of a Dream - Gael Elton Mayo: Quartet, pounds 7.95

Idiosyncratic and elegiac memoir of rural France, specifically ancient houses in Franche-Compte and Provence, by an American writer and painter who was herself doomed to an early death. Mayo's tender vision of people and places is enormously touching, and a valuable antidote to the larky view of the French countryside peddled by you-know-who.