Write Around the World with Richard E. Grant episode 2: Book and travel lover Richard E. Grant journeys to southern France, visiting the Cévennes mountains, Marseille, Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera and Grasse in the hills north of Cannes, in the footsteps of writers inspired by the country, its culture and history.
Reading key passages from their books as he goes along, including works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas, F Scott Fitzgerald, Elizabeth David and Patrick Süskind, Richard not only learns about the lives of these great authors, but also experiences many of the places immortalised in the literary classics they created.
Richard E. Grant is an actor and writer who was born in Swaziland (now known as Eswatini) in 1957. He has appeared in numerous films, television shows, and stage productions, and is known for his versatility and range as an actor. Grant has received critical acclaim for his performances in a variety of roles, and has won numerous awards for his work. Some of his notable films include Withnail & I, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He has also appeared in a number of popular television series, including Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, and Game of Thrones. In addition to his acting career, Grant is also an accomplished writer, and has written several books about his life and career.
Write Around the World with Richard E. Grant episode 2
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish author and poet who was born in 1850. He is best known for his novels and short stories, which include classics such as “Treasure Island,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Stevenson’s writing is known for its vivid and memorable characters, and he is widely regarded as one of the masters of the adventure and horror genres.
In addition to his writing, Stevenson was also an avid traveler, and he spent much of his life exploring different parts of the world. He traveled extensively in Europe, the United States, and the South Pacific, and his travels often served as inspiration for his writing. Stevenson was also interested in social issues and was involved in a number of social and political causes during his lifetime.
Stevenson’s writing has had a lasting impact and his works are still widely read and adapted for film, television, and stage productions today. He is considered one of the most important and influential writers in the English language, and his work continues to be studied and celebrated around the world.
Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned away from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44.
Alexandre Dumas – Write Around the World with Richard E. Grant episode 2
Alexandre Dumas (also known as Alexandre Dumas père, or “Alexandre Dumas the elder”) was a French writer who was born in 1802. He is best known for his historical novels and plays, which include classics such as “The Three Musketeers,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and “The Man in the Iron Mask.” Dumas was a prolific writer and was highly influential in his time. His works have been translated into many languages and have been widely read and adapted for film, television, and stage productions.
Dumas was born in France to a Haitian father and a French mother, and he grew up in a time when racial prejudice was widespread in France. Despite facing discrimination and challenges, he became one of the most successful and influential writers of his time. Dumas was known for his vivid and exciting storytelling, and his works continue to be popular and widely read today. In addition to his writing, Dumas was also involved in politics and social causes, and he was an advocate for the rights of marginalized communities.
Prolific in several genres, Dumas began his career by writing plays, which were successfully produced from the first. He also wrote numerous magazine articles and travel books; his published works totalled 100,000 pages. In the 1840s, Dumas founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris.
His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) to Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Marie-Cessette Dumas, an African slave. At age 14, Thomas-Alexandre was taken by his father to France, where he was educated in a military academy and entered the military for what became an illustrious career.
Dumas’s father’s aristocratic rank helped young Alexandre acquire work with Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, then as a writer, a career which led to early success. Decades later, after the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1851, Dumas fell from favour and left France for Belgium, where he stayed for several years, then moved to Russia for a few years before going to Italy. In 1861, he founded and published the newspaper L’Indépendent, which supported Italian unification, before returning to Paris in 1864.
Though married, in the tradition of Frenchmen of higher social class, Dumas had numerous affairs (allegedly as many as 40). He was known to have had at least four illegitimate children, although twentieth-century scholars believe it was seven. He acknowledged and assisted his son, Alexandre Dumas, to become a successful novelist and playwright. They are known as Alexandre Dumas père (‘father’) and Alexandre Dumas fils (‘son’). Among his affairs, in 1866, Dumas had one with Adah Isaacs Menken, an American actress who was less than half his age and at the height of her career.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery’s exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald’s marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the “Lost Generation” expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the “Great American Novel”. Following the deterioration of his wife’s mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night
