(Richard) Common sense says that when you're going on holiday, don't burden yourself with a bag of books.

Pack a tablet instead, it's light and you can read it in the dark, but I love the feel, the page turning.

Give it a good sniff.

So I've got a case for clothes and a bag for books.

These books aren't the usual travel guide.

(upbeat music) Instead, I'm going to be taking a selection of titles, classic and contemporary, fiction and non-fiction, that have captured ways of life, history and traditions in the South of France.

♪ From stories of glamour and excess... ♪ ...to tales of swashbuckling escape... ♪ ...wild mountain walks... ♪ ...to idyllic rural retreats, seductive smells... ♪ ...to tantalizing tastes... ♪ ...this is one of Europe's most enthralling locations brought to life by some of the world's great writers.

♪ My journey will take me from the mountains of the Cévennes to the bustling City of Marseille, the coastal town of Antibes, to the picturesque hills above Cannes, and finally on to Grasse, the perfume capital of the world.

All of this enriched by some utterly compelling reading material.

(soft music) ♪ A hundred and fifty years ago, Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Kidnapped and Treasure Island, traveled 120 miles across this region on foot with only a donkey for company.

The Cévennes Mountains lie on the southeast edge of the Massif Central in Southern France.

Stevenson was just 28 years old when he came here.

Born in Edinburgh in 1850 and still financially dependent on his parents, he hadn't yet written the books that were to make him famous.

At the time, he was recovering from tuberculosis and suffering from a broken heart following an affair with Fanny Osbourne, a married American woman.

Published in 1879, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes is an account of his journey walking through these mountains, and you can clearly detect the appetite for adventure that was to characterize his later work.

♪ "I have been after an adventure all my life, a pure, dispassionate adventure such as befell early and heroic voyagers, and thus to be found by morning not knowing North from South, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the Earth, an inland castaway, was to find a fraction of my daydreams realized."

(bright music) ♪ Stevenson chose this area to travel because it was cheap, and he could undertake a walk with many physical challenges without creature comforts where he could be at one with nature and have time to think, reflect, and to write.

♪ The Cévennes is still one of France's wildest and most sparsely populated regions.

♪ In the 19th century, it was one of the only parts of France where Protestantism still prevailed following an uprising led by a group of insurgents called the Camisards in 1702.

It was an area that offered exactly the kind of experience Stevenson was seeking, particularly when his only companion was a somewhat reluctant donkey.

♪ (laughing) Well, you know the phrase, "stubborn as a mule"?

Well, I rest my case, although, technically, mule is half donkey.

And Stevenson's donkey was called Modestine, and he, like me, struggled to make progress at the beginning, which was very, very, very slow.

(laughing) What's gonna take, huh?

Dollars?

Food?

Come on, make my life easier.

It was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run, it kept me hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time.

She wants a close-up.

♪ Come on.

In five minutes, it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of the leg.

I'm frankly amazed that he got further than a few yards.

But speed wasn't the point for Stevenson, and he wrote incredibly eloquently about his attitude to travel, which I completely chime with.

He says, "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.

I travel for travel's sake.

The great affair is to move, to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly, to come down off this featherbed of civilization and find the globe granite under foot and strewn with cutting flints.

Alas, as we get up in life and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for.

To hold a pack upon a pack saddle against a gale out of the freezing North is no high industry, but it's one that serves to occupy and compose the mind.

And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?"

Great philosophy.

Come on, are you on the move now?

There you go!

Come on, girl!

(mellow music) ♪ Come on.

(laughing) (upbeat music) ♪ Adam Thorpe is a Booker Prize nominated writer who, like Stevenson, was attracted to the Cévennes both for its wildness and because it was cheap.

♪ He's lived in the area for 30 years, recently publishing his own book, Notes from the Cévennes, which includes a chapter about Robert Louis Stevenson.

We met in the picturesque town of Saint-Jean-du-Gard, one of the places Stevenson visited.

♪ Adam, I love your book.

I mean, it says on the cover, "Half a Lifetime in Provincial France."

So three decades ago, you escaped Thatcher's Britain.

-Yes.

-And came to a place -that was tough.

-It was tough, really, I think, and we had very little money, very, very little money, and it was a wonderful experience, because I felt more genuine in that sense.

We lived very simply and with no heating and all the rest of it, and we were surrounded by people who were in a similar state.

They had accepted and welcomed a kind of poverty, an absence of luxury, I should say.

(Richard) So what prompted Stevenson to make the journey on foot, and why do you think he chose the Cévennes?

(Adam) Well, he was unhappy in love, which is always a good reason, I think, to head off to some mad exploit, and why did he choose the Cévennes, I think first of all, he was very attracted to the landscape, the wildness, which reminded him of Scotland.

It was very close to the country that he came from in terms of spirit and atmosphere, but the fundamental thing is the faith.

So the religion attracted him here, because he came from very strict Presbyterian background.

(Adam) Absolutely.

The Protestant seriousness and zeal, which fired that area, there was also a difference, because it's a warm south, so it's complicated, it's complicated patchwork.

And he put himself up against it in this journey.

It was definitely a real physical challenge for him, which is, I think, wonderful when you see how he doesn't complain at all.

-No.

-But you sense that underneath.

You know, it was no mean task for him to keep walking and very cold without any of the creature comforts -that we have now.

-So he says, "It was like coming down off the featherbed -of civilization."

-Yes.

That's a wonderful, very famous phrase.

What you sense is that this experience that he put himself through is a real experience, it's not something he's dreaming up just for literary purposes.

It's a real challenge for him, especially with his illness.

(soft music) (Richard) But for Stevenson, it wasn't only about coming down off the featherbed of civilization.

Come on, girl.

While Cévennes' Protestant culture was clearly something he could relate to, it's thought that the strict fire and brimstone Calvinism and folk beliefs of his much beloved nurse, Alison Cunningham, had fed his childhood nightmares and instilled a deep fear of sin and damnation.

By the time he made this trip, to his parents' dismay, Stevenson had turned his back on religion.

So when halfway through his journey, he approached the Catholic monastery of Our Lady of the Snows in search of a bed for the night, it offered a real spiritual challenge.

♪ He approached this Trappist monastery with some trepidation, because it represented a betrayal of his parents who were devout Presbyterians.

And this extreme Catholic monastery had a devotion to silence.

♪ "A spidery cross on every hilltop marked the neighborhood of a religious house, and a quarter of a mile beyond, the outlook southward, opening out and growing bolder with every step.

A white statue of the Virgin at the corner of a young plantation directed the traveler to Our Lady of the Snows.

Here then, I struck leftward and pursued my way, driving my secular donkey before me and creaking in my secular boots and gaiters towards the asylum of silence.

I had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me the clanging of a bell, and somehow, I can scarce tell why, my heart sank within me at the sound.

I rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than the Monastery of Our Lady of the Snows."

(bright music) The actual building where Stevenson stayed was burned in a fire in 1912, and subsequently rebuilt.

Today, a handful of monks still live here, observing silence while the hospital next door offers travelers hospitality just as it did 150 years ago.

♪ (distant singing) ♪ When Stevenson was here, he unexpectedly found spiritual solace despite the determination of a retired French soldier, a local priest, both of whom were hell-bent on converting him to Catholicism.

Stevenson admired the purposefulness of the monks and what he described as the stern simplicity of their lives.

♪ Stevenson continued on his journey after leaving Our Lady of the Snows, and there's a wonderful passage in his book in which he recounts a night spent sleeping outdoors beneath the stars.

Stevenson's legacy is not only his extraordinary travelogue, but he's also credited with inventing the precursor for the modern sleeping bag.

"A sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur within," he wrote.

It's interesting that sleeping outside or even camping in a tent for pleasure were barely heard of in the 1870s, so Stevenson was way ahead of his time.

(mellow music) "Light is a dead, monotonous period under a roof, but in the open world, it passes lightly with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of nature.

And yet, even while I was exalting in my solitude, I became aware of a strange lack.

I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within touch, for there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect and to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free."

♪ A year after Stevenson's trip, he traveled to America where he was reunited with his love, Fanny, whose divorce had come through.

They married in 1880 and remained together.

Whether they ever camped together under the stars, though, I don't know.

(mellow music) ♪ I feel very invigorated.

After my visit to the Cévennes where I only had a donkey for company and Stevenson's beguiling travelogue bridging the gap between the past and the present.

I really do feel I've had the most amazing conversation with a very entertaining fellow traveler.

♪ Now for an adventure of a different kind.

Sword fights, swashbuckling romance, daring escapes, well, it's got to be The Count of Monte Cristo written in 1844 by the great Alexandre Dumas père.

This was a book that Stevenson loved, by the way, and the two authors shared a passion for adventure and daring do.

About 200 kilometers south of the Cévennes lies France's oldest city.

"White, warm, alive, Marseille always getting younger as it grows older," wrote Dumas, who chose to begin The Count of Monte Cristo here.

From Marseille, you can see the island that houses the Chateau d'If, once one of France's most notorious prisons.

Here, Edmond Dantès, the brave and dashing hero of Dumas' epic novel is thrown into prison on his wedding day after being falsely accused by three former friends of a political conspiracy to topple Louis XVIII and rescue the exiled Napoleon.

♪ It's no surprise that Dumas chose this location as the setting for his novel, because it has every ingredient that most appealed to him: romance, intrigue, danger, and the remotest chance of escape.

(soft music) Corinne Semerciyan is a local guide and fount of knowledge on Alexandre Dumas.

How famous was Dumas?

(Corinne) His literary career started in 1822 about, and then he became successful with his two famous novels.

So we talk about The Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers, as well as the Queen Margot.

So he made money, so he was a great personage and he was successful.

(Richard) So he was almost like Dan Brown writing The Da Vinci Code now.

-Oh, for sure.

-Of his time.

-For sure.

-A great escape adventure.

-For sure.

-And had a big estate outside Paris called Monte Cristo?

(Corinne) Monte Cristo, Chateau de Monte Cristo.

(Richard) His true family story, his father and a mother, -is extraordinary!

-Extraordinary.

His grandmother was a Black slave, and his father became a great general in Napoleon's army, and he participated in the Campaign of Egypt.

And because of the disagreement, he left the army, but he was a great general, Black, which is quite unique.

-Unique.

-Unique!

(Richard) When Dantès is first arrested, he still believes that a mistake has been made and that his innocence will be proven.

Even when he is escorted by two gendarmes to a boat, he has no idea of the fate that awaits him.

"Dantès got up and naturally turned his eye to the point towards which the boat appeared to be heading.

Some 200 yards in front of them loomed the sheer black rock from which, like a flinty excrescence, rises the Chateau d'If.

To Dantès, who'd not been thinking about it at all, the sudden appearance of this strange shape, this prison shrouded in such deep terror, this fortress which, for three centuries, has nourished Marseille with its gloomy legends had the same effect as the spectacle of the scaffold on a condemned man.

'My God,' he cried, 'The Chateau d'If.

Why are we going there?'

The gendarmes smiled.

'You can't be taking me to incarcerate me there,' Dantès continued.

'The Chateau d'If is a state prison meant only for major political criminals.

I haven't committed any crime.

Are there examining magistrates or any other sort of judges on the Chateau d'If?'

'As far as I know, I know governor, jailors, garrison, and solid walls.'"

(soft dramatic music) ♪ Can you tell me the history of the Chateau d'If?

(Corinne) Chateau d'If was used to be a military fortress commissioned by the King of France, Francois Premier, Francis I, to defend Marseille against the Hapsberg.

So as the military system was over, they turned it into a prison.

-And when was that?

-At the end of the 16th century.

Has anybody ever escaped?

Probably they tried to, but it was very difficult, as we have the very thick walls and it's a fortress.

What we know is that the condition of lights were very difficult, very hard for the people.

(Richard) In The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantès spends 14 grim years in this fortress.

-And this is the courtyard.

-Uh-huh.

(Corinne) With a well collecting the rainwater.

Uh-huh.

Dantès was accused to be Bonapartiste against the king of that time, Louis XVIII, so he was imprisoned in the cells right there, which was usually dedicated for the poor people.

So there was a hierarchy of how much money you had affected where you were in the prison.

-Exactly.

-So this was the lowest.

-The lowest.

-And then up top?

The luxury prisons.

(mellow music) So prisoners who had money could pay the pistole, we called it, having one window, so the light getting into the cell, as well as a fireplace.

(Richard) Today, visitors can see a cell very much like the one in which Dantès would have been imprisoned.

So he would've been here in solitary confinement.

(Corinne) Exactly.

Edmond Dantès, as you know, was arrested the day of his wedding with Mercedes, and he spent 14 years in this cell in the novel, and after seven years, he communicated with his neighbor, the Abbot Faria, and he just made that hole to speak with the old man.

(Richard) So in the story, he's in solitary confinement, but how many people in real life would have been in here, how many prisoners?

Oh, there were many.

On the ground floor, there were about 300 persons, and in a cell like this like about 50.

(Richard) It's unimaginable to spend all that time alone here with that tiny window for light.

(Corinne) It was horrible, yes, awful.

The conditions of lives were terrible.

(solemn music) (Richard) In the novel, Dantès stages a daring escape by replacing himself in the sack that contains the body of his dead neighbor, Abbot Faria.

"They took four or five steps more, still going up, then Dantès felt them take him by the head and feet and swing him.

'One,' said the gravediggers, 'two, three!'

At this moment, Dantès felt himself being thrown into a huge void, flying through the air like a wounded bird, then falling, falling in a terrifying descent that froze his heart.

Although he was drawn downwards by some weight that sped his flight, it seemed to him that the fall lasted a century.

Finally, with a terrifying noise, he plunged like an arrow into icy water.

He cried out, his cry instantly stifled by the water closing around him.

Dantès had been thrown into the sea, and a 36-pound cannonball tied to his feet was dragging him to the bottom.

The sea is the graveyard of the Chateau d'If.

♪ But isn't it amazing that even after all these years, since 1844 when the book was published, that it has such mythic proportions for people?

Yes, and at first because Alexandre Dumas was very successful.

He is one of the most famous writers, novelists in France.

I think it has been translated in 100 languages.

We say like Don Quixote of Cervantes, the Bible is one of the most famous book.

And we know that he loved to eat and drink, because the pictures of him when he was a young man in the museum downstairs, he's thin, and by the end of his life, he's well-upholstered.

-Well-upholstered.

-With success.

(Corinne) He enjoyed the French melons from Provence of Cavaillon.

-Ah, right.

-And he said to Cavaillon, "I will offer my books to your library, and in exchange, I would like to have every year melons of Cavaillon," and it's true.

The books are in the Library of Cavaillon.

So he became the shape of his favorite melon -by the end of his life.

-His favorite melon.

-That seems a good exchange.

-Melon de Cavaillon, good exchange, yeah.

(mellow music) (Richard) Like Robben Island in Cape Town, Alcatraz in San Francisco, and Chateau d'If in Marseille, these prison islands within sight of the city and earshot are especially torturous for prisoners, because they're so close to where everybody's living a life of freedom, and of course, as a reader, hugely intriguing, and I perfectly understand why Dumas chose to incarcerate his main character on that island for 14 years, because as a reader, you root for him to escape.

And for anybody who's innocent and has been imprisoned, that longing to see their freedom and follow their story is absolutely innate in us and very, very compelling.

(waves crashing) (upbeat music) While we're on the subject of escape, just two hours' drive from the gritty city of Marseille, nestled between Cannes and Nice on the French Riviera lies one of Europe's most desirable destinations, the beautiful coastal town of Antibes.

♪ Once a winter destination in the 1920s, a group of wealthy and sophisticated Americans discovered this area's summer appeal.

♪ Among them was the great novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had just finished writing The Great Gatsby when he arrived here with his brilliant but tormented wife, Zelda, and their daughter Scottie in 1925.

♪ The Fitzgeralds stayed at what is now the splendid Hotel Belle Rives, which was then a private villa.

♪ Although considerably smaller, it still had its own beach on one of the most beautiful stretches of this coastline.

"Just the right place to rough it," wrote Fitzgerald.

"An escape from the world."

♪ I can't imagine F. Scott Fitzgerald spending a night in a sleeping bag in the Cévennes, because believe it or not, he thought this was roughing it.

♪ After World War I, European economies had plummeted, making the dollar strong.

The Fitzgeralds had run into money troubles in New York due to their extravagant lifestyle and saw this as a place where they could economize.

The novel Tender is the Night was inspired by Fitzgerald's time here, and it brilliantly captures the hedonism of the years following the First World War, where champagne flowed, parties were legendary, and the setting, perfectly seductive.

♪ "Noon dominated sea and sky.

Even the white line of Cannes five miles off had faded to a mirage of what was fresh and cool.

A robin-breasted sailing boat pulled in, behind it a strand from the outer, darker sea.

It seemed that there was no life anywhere in all this expansive coast, except under the filtered sunlight of those umbrellas where something went on amid the color and the murmur."

(soft music) Tender is the Night is the story of a talented and charismatic psychiatrist named Dick Diver.

♪ The wealthy and glamorous patient Nicole, who becomes his wife, and their 10-year struggle with Nicole's deteriorating mental health.

As Zelda's mental health declined, the novel increasingly mirrored the Fitzgeralds' own marriage breakdown.

♪ The book begins with the description of a smart hotel called Gausse's.

It's where Rosemary Hoyt, a young American starlet, meets Nicole and Dick Diver.

She falls instantly in love with him.

The model for the hotel, Gausse's, is the Hotel du Cap-Eden Roc, and for Fitzgerald, it epitomized the glamour and allure of the South of France.

-Bonjour!

-Bonjour!

♪ "On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about halfway between Marseille and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel.

Deferential palms cool its flushed facade, and before it stretches short dazzling beach.

Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people.

A decade ago, it was almost deserted after its English clientele went North in April.

Now, many bungalows cluster near it.

When this story begins, only the cupolas of a dozen old villas rotted like water lilies among the masked pines between Gausse's Hotel des Etrangers, and Cannes, five miles away".

♪ Fitzgerald modeled his characters Dick and Nicole Diver on Gerald and Sara Murphy, a glamorous American couple he and Zelda had befriended whose friends included Picasso and Gertrude Stein.

Before buying their own property here, the Murphys persuaded the Hotel du Cap, previously only open in the winter, to welcome visitors for the summer season.

Philippe Perd has been general manager of the Hotel du Cap since 2005.

♪ Philippe, what do you think of F. Scott Fitzgerald's portrait of the Hotel du Cap?

When you read that novel, although, you know, part of it is invented, he makes Sara and Gerald Murphy's story and experience on the Riviera so real.

It became really the American colony, a very isolated spot where Americans, you know, would get together with the Murphys, sitting by the pool, enjoying the sun.

You know, the Murphys made really the Riviera for six years between '23 and '29 the place to be and especially the Hotel du Cap.

(Richard) Almost a century after the Murphys were here, this remains one of Europe's most exclusive hotels.

And it's easy to see why for Fitzgerald it was the perfect place to explore the themes of money, class, and decadence that so fascinated him.

(mellow music) The service in the hotel is like an immaculately Michelin-starred choreographed ballet with waiters gliding back and forth dressed in Fred Astaire gear as if their feet were on caster wheels.

Whew!

Whew!

(laughing) ♪ (diving board clacking) ♪ Fitzgerald remained dazzled by the glamour of the rich, but he was also acutely aware of the dangers of unlimited wealth.

"The rich," he said, "are different to you and me."

Here in the Cap d'Antibes, there's a very clear divide between the haves and the have-nots.

The advantage of reading a book in the place where it's actually set is that you get the 360-degree, three-dimensional impact of where you are in that the sights, sounds, and smells of the place which you can't capture in quite the same way on the written page, so it's--it's a really hypnotic... plus to be in the locale where the book is set and to see what he saw and to smell what he smelled.

(soft music) ♪ I Skyped with my mother the other day, and she said, "Darling, you look so old!"

She's 89.

I said, "Well, I am 63.

My hair has gone gray."

She said, "Yes, but you're looking very rough."

(laughing) ♪ Nothing like your ma to tell you how it is.

Hopefully, a restorative weekend on the Côte d'Azur might have knocked off a couple of years.

The moment you're here slightly beyond the season, i.e., late September, there's just nobody here.

And the quality of the light, and the calmness of the sea... you feel and understand why painters and writers have especially been attracted to the Côte d'Azur... for the last 200 years or even before that.

♪ Some come to holiday.

Some never leave.

And over recent years, there's been a glut of books charting people's experiences.

A familiar face both on the big and small screens and known for her portrayal of Helen Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small, actor Carol Drinkwater moved to the hills above Cannes in the 1980s, since when she's written several novels as well as a series of bestselling books that describe her experiences starting a new life here.

♪ I'm hugely excited to be driving towards Carol Drinkwater's farm.

I loved her book The Olive Farm that came out almost 20 years ago.

(uplifting music) It's a sort of double love story describing the romance between Carol and her husband, Michel, and their infatuation with a crumbling, old olive farm which they set about restoring.

What's great is that it captures all the trials and tribulations of starting a new life as well as the excitement.

♪ "All my life," writes Carol, "I've dreamt of acquiring a crumbling, shabby chic house overlooking the sea.

♪ In my mind's eye, I have pictured a corner of paradise where friends can gather to swim, eat fresh fruits picked directly from the garden, and great steaming plates of food served from an al fresco kitchen.

♪ And among all of those gregarious and bohemian activities, I slip away unnoticed to a cool stone room of my own lined head to foot with books, sprawling maps, and dictionaries, switch on my computer, and settle down peacefully to write."

♪ Carol, what was here when you first saw the property?

(Carol) This was jungle.

-All of this?

-All of it.

We couldn't see virtually the top of the olive trees because it was so overgrown.

So when we cut all this back, we discovered this extraordinary entrance here and we discovered all these olive trees.

The smaller ones, we've put in.

The old ones, most of those are over a hundred years.

There's one or two that are 400 years old.

(Richard) What I'm struck by more than anything about your story is that it's a story-- it's a love story in that there's a man and a piece of land.

Now, chicken and the egg, which came first, -the land or the man?

-The man.

No, no, I met Michel in Australia and then we started seeing each other in Europe, and he came down here for the Cannes Film Festival.

And I'd been looking everywhere for what I called my house by the sea.

I went along the Croisette into the estate agents and I told them how much money I had, and they said, "Not for that money, madam."

So what we did was Michel came with me, but he said, "Well, let's do this together."

And the estate agent brought us up here to this jungle and a house that was squatted and had no electricity, no water and, um, I fell in love with it, we did.

(Richard) So the land and the man, one package.

You are married, and you have fallen in love -with the land.

-And the Mediterranean and the story that goes with all of that as well, so, yes.

Yes.

(Richard) "It had been a vague sketch," writes Carol, "a dream without lines between the dots until I met Michel.

Then, it began to gain wattage.

To take on a sketch, develop light and shade, rhythm sinew.

Together, we've breathed life into those blurred images.

Together, we have discovered how to live a new life."

(piano music) So, you've become an olive farmer.

How do you become an olive farmer?

(Carol) No, I'm not an olive farmer, it's a passion.

Um, I went around the Mediterranean for two books, um, The Olive Root and The Olive Tree, so I know the history a little bit and I know the tapestry of how it created the Mediterranean and the Phoenicians here and the Greeks there.

And I know quite a bit about that because that really is a passion of mine.

In terms of being an olive farmer, not really.

I mean, um, I know when I think it's right for us to harvest the fruits.

I know the mill I like to go to.

We're completely organic.

I'm really quite strict about it now since I went traveling with the books and saw what--the damage that was happening elsewhere.

So, an amateur.

(Richard) A passionate amateur, okay.

And like all love affairs, there are great troughs and trials, and you have certainly experienced them -in your olive farm.

-Yeah, in my olive farm and in our personal life.

I mean, we split up for a while, so that was difficult.

I stayed here on my own to keep it going, and that's when I started to write The Olive Farm books because I wanted to keep faith with our story, our love affair.

And I didn't know how the story would end when I started writing the books.

And it was then when I began to feel a relationship with the trees and asked myself, "Who first farmed them," that I decided to go on this journey around the Mediterranean.

How long were you estranged from each other?

I don't-- Nearly five years.

So it was a long period of time for me to struggle on by myself.

And one of the old farmers told me years and years ago, in 1956, there was a terrible frost here.

Got to minus eight, and many of the olive trees in the Var and here right up to southern Spain died off.

And so lots of the farmers cut their trees, but some of them didn't.

Some of them said, "No, the olive tree is the tree of eternity."

And they waited, and those trees regrew, and those are now 50, 60, 70-year-old trees fruiting again.

And I'd heard the story a long time before Michel and I split up, and it stayed with me, that story, the resonance of the idea of believing in something that is seeded and has its eternity, you know, has its-- And I allowed myself to believe that that would bring us back together again, that our love was deep enough for it to regrow.

(Richard) Since the publication of The Olive Farm in 2001, Carol has written a further five books describing with real honesty the ups and downs of her life both personally and as an olive farmer here.

(uplifting music) So the harvest is at what time of the month here?

(Carol) We will probably harvest third or fourth week of October because I like the fruits to be still green so that the oil is then very peppery and it also has a slightly longer life.

♪ (Richard) Carol, you're preparing ratatouille from Elizabeth David's Book of Mediterranean Food that was published in the 1950s.

It's extraordinary to think that we take it for granted now that we use olive oil in everyday cooking in England.

So when Elizabeth David first came here, there was still rationing in place, so olive oil and garlic and all of those things -just weren't available.

-I'd forgotten this.

When I grew up, the only olive oil we had was in the cupboard in the bathroom and it was about this size, the bottle.

-Exactly the same.

-Did you have the same thing?

-Exactly the same.

-And my mother used to heat it to get the wa--grr, the wax out of my ears.

That's the only knowledge I had of olive oil.

I mean, it's extraordinary to think about now living here on this farm.

But, certainly, we didn't cook with it, but then we didn't have wine on the table and things like that, I mean, that whole-- It's a whole change of attitude towards living and eating, isn't it?

I mean, eating is something now to celebrate, and I think when I was a child, I don't know that I'd say that what we did was celebrating eating.

(Richard) Boiled.

(Carol) Boiled cabbage.

So I think Elizabeth David kind of came across the Mediterranean diet before the Mediterranean diet had been named, really.

-Yes.

-Don't you think so?

And took that wonderful knowledge back home.

She was in confinement here, and if I'm right, she was on--she sailed over here, I think, with a lover, and they got as far as Antibes, I think, and then the war was declared.

And that's when she began to discover the local cooking, and the markets, and what could be done.

(soft music) (Richard) It was the writer Norman Douglas living in Antibes at the time who introduced David to the joys of the Mediterranean diet during the six months she was here.

When she returned to austerity Britain seven years later, she was horrified by the contrast.

She set about recording some of the recipes she discovered, offering a taste of sunshine to the British public by way of olive oil, garlic, courgettes, and much, much more.

♪ (Carol) And I think that's one of the joys of her writing, actually, is that she creates a world.

It isn't just about the cooking.

And you kind of want to be there, you want those Mediterranean jugs and those Portuguese espadrilles -and all that sort of thing.

-But that's exactly what you've created in your books.

People read your books with this vast appetite for sharing in that life or dreaming of having it for themselves.

But that's true of so much literature, isn't it?

You take a journey that you want to go on.

I mean, that's the nature of writing and offering people, you know, to take your arm and travel with you.

That's what it's about.

And she does it through vegetables and cooking.

But, certainly, it was down here that she discovered all this wonderful Mediterranean food and these goodies that grow down here.

And people didn't really know much about it.

According to Elizabeth David, it's a ragout of vegetables and you have to peel the tomatoes, Carol, -which you haven't done.

-Which I haven't done.

This is about making me wrong now.

(Richard) Yes, I'm afraid so.

You have to cut the unpeeled aubergine -into squares.

-Oh, unpeeled.

I'm pleased to hear that.

And then you have to slice the onions... -Slice the onions.

-...and put them into a frying pan.

So I think this will be a situation where you're preparing this, and then we'll cut to: "Here's one I prepared earlier."

(Carol laughs) (upbeat music) ♪ How much would you say that the geography and the landscape of where we are has influenced and affected you as a writer?

I think a hundred percent.

Though, I don't always write about here.

I mean, it is my main subject in a way.

My new book is set inland of here and is based on a true story in 1943 about one particular village, so that's entirely taken from here.

All the savors, the flavors, the scents and everything is immensely evocative.

The sea is very important to me, too, and the history of the Mediterranean.

I think also the Provençal way of thinking is very much not French.

It is abs--it is a language on its own or several dialects and languages, and the history of this area, and the nature of the people.

I mean, they're very particular, the people down here.

And they love telling stories.

They're great storytellers.

So I love all that.

It's a great inspiration to me.

And I never tire of it.

There's always more to discover.

Always.

-May I try your liquid gold?

-Please.

Absolutely.

(Richard) Wow, God, it smells so good.

Now this is the last we've got of, um, last season before we harvest again.

But it's still very good, isn't it?

Really good.

Really good!

(piano music) It's delicious.

♪ From taste to smell, the South of France has it all.

I can't tell you how excited I am to be here in Grasse, the perfume capital of the world, because it combines two great passions of mine.

The first is scent.

I've been led by my nose all my life and I've compulsively smelled everything in sight, so much so that when I was 12 years old, I tried to make perfume out of gardenia and rose petals boiled in water to impress a girl I was madly in love with called Betsy Clapp with a double P. Took me 50, 60 years to create my own professional brand here in Grasse.

The second is Patrick Süskind's Perfume novel.

♪ It's the best description of scent I've ever come across, and reading it is almost a physical experience.

♪ Published in 1985, Perfume, subtitled The Story of a Murderer, was one of the most successful German novels of the 20th century, selling over 20 million copies worldwide.

The novel's protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a strange, unloved orphan, was born with the greatest sense of smell the world has ever known, but no scent of his own.

Grenouille follows his nose to this idyllic mountain town to learn more about the art of enfleurage, an ancient technique of extracting the aromatic oils from flowers.

♪ In a rare interview, Perfume's reclusive author Patrick Süskind described hiring a moped so that he could drive around this area, immersing himself in its smells while researching his novel.

♪ Grasse has been known as the perfume capital of the world since the 16th century, when perfume was used to cover up the dreadful smell produced by the city's tannery, or leather-making industry.

♪ The area has a microclimate that makes it perfect for growing flowers, and it's here that Chanel, Dior, and other great perfume houses continue to source the jasmine, tuberoses, and roses that form the heart of some of the world's most iconic fragrances.

♪ Caroline de Boutiny is a perfume creator, also referred to as a nose in the business, at Galimard, one of the oldest perfumeries in Grasse.

(Caroline) This is one of my labs, the place where I develop all of Galimard's perfume and also for some other brands that I cannot tell you.

(Richard) Can we do a test and you show me how-- because you're a professional nose-- how you make something?

Yeah, sure.

(upbeat music) -Wow.

-You like leather?

Yeah, I love it.

(Caroline) Okay.

-Do you like chocolate?

-No, hate it.

-Oh.

-I hate chocolate.

-Even the smell?

-The smell is the worst for me.

Affreux.

Really, it's terrible.

It's like cheese.

-Absolutely revolting.

-You don't like cheese?

No.

Chocolate and cheese, absolutely revolting.

I have no choice.

As you know, it's your--it's your DNA.

-I'm sorry.

-No, no, no, no.

I think it's maybe difficult for you to live in France.

♪ -Okay, moss?

-Yeah, I love moss.

Mm.

Okay.

(clinking) (Caroline) And so you like strong perfumes?

(Richard) Yeah, very.

Have you read Patrick Süskind's book?

Sure, sure.

No, it's totally crazy...

It's the only book that I've read that absolutely captures this obsession with smell like no other book.

-Would you agree?

-That's right.

-Yeah.

-Ginger?

Yeah, I love ginger.

Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah, put that straight in.

-And for the top notes?

-Citruses?

(sniffing) -Wow.

-Mm.

Pew!

♪ -Bergamot?

You like bergamot.

-Yeah, I love bergamot.

♪ Mm.

Is this bergamot from here or from Egypt?

-Calabria.

-Calabria.

♪ -Wow.

-Not too bad.

Not too bad.

Pretty good.

I love that the whole-- the roar of the leather at the bottom and then all the citrus at the top.

I can first smell the leather.

Now you can choose the name.

Ha-ha.

-Grenouille.

-Grenouille.

(Richard) I have to because he's the--he's the-- We're in France, and he's the main character -in the book Perfume.

-Okay.

(Richard) In honor of him.

♪ Caroline, the nose at Galimard, has concocted this Grenouille de Grant, which I'm delighted to have.

I know it's got to macerate for another two weeks, but... (spritzing fragrance) For a man obsessed with smell, it couldn't be a better way of ending my time here.

♪ In Perfume, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille leaves Paris where he has worked in a tannery as well as for a leading perfume maker.

Arriving in Grasse, he's immediately greeted by an explosion of smells, but the one that completely overpowers him is the scent of a beautiful young woman.

Grenouille realizes that there is only one way to capture the smell and embarks on a terrifying spree which results in the murder of 26 girls.

Dominique Pillon organizes tours of Grasse for readers of Patrick Süskind's Perfume.

♪ So, Dominique, we're in the relatively new part of Grasse with pre-19th-century Grasse, the old town, behind us.

So, the main character in Perfume, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, where would he have arrived from geographically here into the town?

He would arrive from the hill and walk along this large square and discover the town surrounded by ramparts in the 18th century.

When you first read the book, what was-- what did you think of it?

-Ooh, I didn't like it.

-Why?

(Dominique) Because how can you kill 26 girls just to get a perfect smell?

And because of the smell described in the novel, I didn't realize before that in the 18 and, uh, back into the medieval period, the smell were so high.

And, then, reading it again, I feel it was so great, describing and using a vocabulary so precise to give the emotions and how was the town before.

♪ (fluttering) (Richard) Dominique, you give tours of the main locations from the book in Grasse.

Are you surprised that people want to see where fiction takes place with such a murderous central character?

(Dominique) Sometimes yes, but I understand why because there are so many emotions in the novel, and they want to discover the place where a murder could have been and also the history of perfume, the history of the town, and how was the town of the 18th century.

What drew Jean-Baptiste Grenouille to the tannery here in Grasse?

(Dominique) He was looking for familiar places because he worked for tanners in Paris, so the smell took to him, and it was not difficult from that place to discover all the town following the different smell: smell of the trade, of the shops, the smell of the mills, smell of the perfumer extraction, the factory, you know?

And, so, he was looking for that and starting from the place of the tanning process.

♪ (Richard) How many people come on these tours?

(Dominique) Uh, a lot.

A lot.

Coming from all around the world, you know?

Korean, Italian, German, of course, U.S. citizen... -It's a tourist attraction.

-Yes.

♪ (Richard) What significance does the cathedral play in the story?

Uh, on the 24th December, 1765, there was a mass to thank God that there was no more murder.

But it was the beginning of the last murder, the biggest, Laure Richis, was killed.

To do the masterpiece for Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.

(Richard) When Grenouille finally wears the perfume he's created, he exudes an overwhelming charisma.

Written in post-war Germany, some have speculated that the idea of a monstrous figure exerting such a terrifying hold has obvious parallels.

But others find different meanings.

What, for you, is the message of this book?

(Dominique) For me, the message of love and don't look people with their appearance.

Just try to understand them and love them without thinking about how they look like.

I agree, and I also think that the search for identity, which we all have, is absolutely central to what the story is, and I think that is why it appeals to so many people, because if you smell your own skin, not unlike Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, I think it's hard to know what your own scent is like.

And he doesn't have any at all, so his quest for that is his quest for his identity, and unfortunately, he has to murder many people along the way, but we spend our whole lives trying to find out who we are and to find love.

(Dominique) You have to love yourself... (soft music) ...because it's the most important thing in life.

Let's go into the church and get married.

Oh, yes.

With pleasure.

(Richard) The writers who've accompanied me on this trip have opened my eyes and allowed me to experience the places I've visited in a completely different and far richer way.

(majestic music) From Dumas' magnificent escape story... ♪ ...to Süskind's strange fantasy... Wow.

...Stevenson's retreat from civilization... ♪ ...to the Fitzgeralds' respite from the financial constraints of life in America... -Bonjour.

-Bonjour.

♪ ...and Carol Drinkwater who fulfilled a long-held dream, it occurs to me that in one way or another, their books perhaps all are for fantasies of escape, and what a place to escape to.

It really is no surprise that the South of France has attracted and captivated so many writers whose accounts have created a feast for all the senses, be it the cowbells in the Cévennes, the tolling of bells in village-top churches, the gently lapping waves in Antibes, the delicious Mediterranean cuisine, the luminosity of the light, and last but not least, the smell of it.

Ah.

It's a combination of lavender, garlic, olive oil, candy floss, mimosa, geranium, and sea air.

Has a certain Gallic je ne sais quoi that I can't put into words.

♪ (bright music)