Peter Mayle, Whose ‘Year In Provence’ Drastically Changed How Britons Vacation, Has Died At 78

The book also opened Provence up to the world – but first to Britain. “Mayle’s relaxed amusement with the French villagers appealed to traditional British frustrations at dealing with their neighbours, and more important, it linked into what the writer George Mikes once described as the English love of enduring hardship: the lavender-scented pleasures of Provence came only at the cost of adapting to life among the locals.”