Mr. Harte's Holiday

Just across the Channel lies a different world, the north coast of France, celebrated by generations of painters and writers, from Eugene Boudin to Marcel Proust. It is a world of picturesque fishing ports like Treboul, of genteel resorts like Cabourg, which Proust called Balbec, and where he fell in love with Albertine and of old-fashioned sea-side towns like Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, the setting for Jacques Tati's "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday". Glynn Boyd Harte evokes this lost domain. Setting off from Wimereux, he journeys unsystematically westwards, painting madly-turreted villas, pre-war garages, their walls plastered with old advertisements, cafes with their red-checked gingham table-cloths, sea-side stalls, with rubber tyres and buckets and spades, and fishmongers' slabs covered with oysters, mussels and langoustines. He stays in elegantly faded hotels with bizarre wallpapers. The book finishes in an end-of-season sadness as the last visitors depart, the hotels are closed and shuttered and the long autumn shadows creep across the empty sands. Glynn Boyd Harte's previous books include "A Weekend in Dieppe", "Metro-land" and "Venice".