Peter Mayle: Author whose memoir ‘A Year in Provence’ inspired a generation

Peter Mayle’s 1989 memoir spawned a literary subgenre and a BBC miniseries – though he had to leave the region after driving hordes of British tourists to his small French town

‘I was meant to be writing a novel but got distracted by what was going on around me’ (Getty)

“How would you sum up the French view of the British?” an Independent reader asked Peter Mayle in 2004.

Mayle replied with the very wit that made his 1989 memoir, A Year in Provence, such an enduring success. “When I first came here, I always had this suspicion they were thinking, ‘Bloody English. Coming down here, raping our women, eating our food and drinking our wine.’ Then, one day, a neighbour came over for a drink and he said, ‘You’re English, which is unfortunate, but we do prefer you to the Parisians.’”

The book itself he said happened “by accident” when he got distracted from writing a novel as he adjusted to life in Ménerbes, in the Luberon region of Provence – he had his third wife Jennie moved there from Devon in 1987.

“I was meant to be writing a novel called Hotel Pastis at the time and got distracted by what was going on around me,” he said.

A Year in Provence set off a writing genre. “ I get sent all my literary offspring by the publishers – I’ve got about 15 or 16 of them now – about anything, from a pigsty in Ireland to the Napa Valley.”

He ended up inspiring thousands to head to the Mediterranean in search of the sun, food and wine.

Brighton-born Mayle, who has died aged 78, had been an advertising executive in New York, before he and his wife bought a ramshackle stone house in Provence in 1986. “We saw it one afternoon and had mentally moved in by dinner,” he recalled in the book.

A comical cast of local tradesmen came and went, deciding to work only when in the mood while Mayle’s 200-year-old farmhouse remained uninhabitable.

“Every time I sat in one room and tried to work on the novel,” he said in 1991, “the builder would come in and say, ‘We’re knocking a hole in that wall, so you’ll have to go somewhere else.’”

Mayle made little progress on the novel he hoped to write, writing letters to his agent describing his frustrations. The agent suggested he shelve the novel and write about life in Provence. Soon enough, Mayle developed a growing admiration for the Mediterranean pace of life, built around visits to the town cafe, where diary dates were ignored in favour of conversation, crusty bread and a bottle of wine.

The book chronicled a calendar year, beginning with a New Year’s Day lunch and ending with a Christmas feast – in Mayle’s new home, renovated at long last.

When it came out it was expected to sell only a few thousand copies. But the book word of mouth caught on, as readers were charmed by Mayle’s evocation of a rural world where the only thing that seemed to matter was the quality of life. “I confess to having read this delightful memoir not once, not twice, but four times now,” wrote one reviewer.

Practically every page throbbed with mouthwatering descriptions of the local food and wine. A local restaurant owner “rhapsodised over the menu: foie gras, lobster mousse, beef en croute, salad dressed in virgin oil, hand-picked cheeses, desserts of miraculous lightness, digestifs. It was a gastronomic aria which he performed at each table, kissing the tips of his fingers so often that he must have blistered his lips.”

More than 5 million copies of A Year in Provence were sold worldwide. Mayle quickly followed with a second bestseller in 1991, Toujours Provence.

In 1993 the book became a much-loved BBC miniseries starring John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan. Almost immediately hordes of visitors were arriving in southern France, crowding the streets, knocking on Mayle’s door and casting shadows over the idyllic life he had described. He found people picnicking on his doorstep, walking through his property and splashing in his backyard pool.

“These visitors have become pests,” he said in 1993. “We cannot take it anymore and we want to be out of here by the end of the summer.”

There was an inevitable backlash from local residents and British expats, who accused Mayle of ruining their Provençal paradise. “What did you learn from this book?” a French neighbour said in 1994. “That we eat a lot, that we drink a lot, that everything happens slowly.”

The local bar owner fumed, “Are my glasses dirty? Did you catch fleas in here? Are the toilets really disgusting?”

Mayle moved to Amagansett, on New York’s Long Island, for several years, writing novels and other books evoking the life of Provence. He returned to France in the late Nineties, settling several miles from his original house but careful not to reveal the exact location.

Mayle was born in Surrey but was schooled in Barbados, his father a Colonial Office worker. He rerturend to England after leaving school at 16, but by his early twenties a copywriting career and taken to New York for a firm led by British advertising tycoon David Ogilvy. After considerable success, Mayle set out on his own in the 1970s to write books, specialising at first in children’s titles, often on such sensitive subjects as sex, divorce and death.

His humorous children’s guide to reproduction, Where Did I Come From?, was widely translated and sold more than 2 million copies. He also published several books in the Wicked Willie series, featuring a talking cartoon penis.

Mayle eventually published the novel he first set out to write in Provence, Hotel Pastis (1993), along with several others, including A Good Year, about an Englishman who enters the wine business. It was adapted into a 2006 film starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott – one of Mayle’s neighbours in Provence.

He also published a series of mystery novels set in the Mediterranean and published other books about Provence and the finer things in life, including custom-made shoes.

His marriages to Pamela Mayle and Nicola Mayle ended in divorce.

Survivors include his third wife, to whom he was married for more than 40 years, Jennie Mayle; three sons from his first marriage; two daughters from his second marriage; and several grandchildren.

In 2006, Mayle described the kind of life he learned to lead in Provence after a high-pressure career in advertising. “I don’t want to do 50 push-ups before breakfast,” he said. “Instead, I want to enjoy the things that one can enjoy at my age: friendship, food and drink, the beauties of nature. The only thing I want from tomorrow is that it should be as good as today.”

Peter Mayle, author, born 14 June 1939, died 18 January 2018

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