Ford Madox Ford said France "begins on the Left Bank of the Seine" and described Provence as "a frame of mind". His last lover, the painter Biala, said "we grow our own vegetables, we have six (not very magnificent) rooms, and a garden with the finest view in the world".

Julian Barnes and Hermione Lee visit Aix-en-Provence to explore the life of Ford Madox Ford, author of The Good Soldier and - 4 years before his death in 1939 - of a book about Provence which includes descriptions of bull-fighting, a recipe for bouillabaisse, an argument about the Albigensian religious heresy and a history of troubadour poetry.

Hermione Lee explores the way these interests are woven into the plot of his best known book - The Good Soldier - "a tale of two couples with additional victims who come into their orbit -and it's about adultery, betrayal madness, suicide, desperate love" which she believes is a book about Albigensian beliefs.

Julian Barnes explains that "the great emotional smash of Ford's own life was in 1924 when he received a contribution from the Transatlantic Review from a young woman" who was then called Ella Lenglet. He gave her work the title "Triple Sec" and gave her the pen-name Jean Rhys. "She had three francs, a cardboard suitcase and a lot of talent, her husband was in jail and the bad move was to move her in with him and Stella Bowen." All four parties in this affair then wrote books which depicted their tangled relationships.

The programme ends by considering his end. When he arrived in France in 1922, Ford was one of over five hundred mourners to attend the funeral of Proust. In June 1939 Ford was taken ill, en route to his beloved South of France, and buried at a ceremony in the port town of Deauville attended by only 3 people.

Producer: Robyn Read

Reader: Kerry Shale. Show less