The English as They See others: England Revealed in Provence

Abstract

Peter Mayle's best-selling accounts of his life in Provence have appealed to a wide audience in Britain but have also attracted harsh criticism. It is argued here that these works, although ostensibly about Provence, are better analysed as myths for the English. The contrast with an account from the 1930s reflects wider social change, showing a move from a confidently colonial to a self-consciously ‘anthropological’ mode. Doubts about the authenticity of Mayle's accounts are related both to his use of free indirect discourse and other literary devices in order to convey ethnographic colour, and to ideological tensions in post-colonial Britain.