Most authors have an impossible task in attempting to record the extent of their debt to those who have influenced them. I am no exception.
My gratitude goes to both Elizabeth David and M. F. K. Fisher and their publishers: to Robert Hale/Jill Norman for permission to quote from An Omelette and a glass of Wine by Elizabeth David, and to the Hogarth Press for permission to quote from Two Towns in Provence by M. F. K. Fisher.
I should, also, like to thank those friends and acquaintances who have given particular advice and help in the preparation of this book. In addition to those mentioned in the text I am specially grateful to, in France, Suzanne and Jeannette Doize, Yvette, Brigitte and Jean Marquet, Bernard and Marie-George Perrier, Susan and Harry Beazley, Pierre and Henriette Kieny, Hubert Laurent and his parents, Isabelle Jaine, Abel Broc, Marc Ryan and his grandfather Pierre Rolland, Geneviève Roux in her bookshop in Boulieu and Monique Génis.
