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From the Camargue to the Alps: A Walk Across France in Hannibal's Footsteps
With passion and wit, Bernard Levin describes his travels on foot through the beautiful countryside of south-eastern France. He follows in the mighty footsteps of the great Carthaginian enemy of Rome, Hannibal, who made the expedition with an army and elephants nearly two millennia before. From the Camargue via the Rhône Valley, across the Alps, and into Italy during August snowstorms, he comments on the social and historical importance of the landscapes he passes through, taking detours to the table of chef Jacques Pic at Valence and the Arles region immortalized by Van Gogh. The journey would not have been complete without enjoying the hospitality of the Moussets—the fifth generation of their family to produce wine at Châteauneuf-du-Pape, before turning eastwards, to face the greater challenge of the Alps.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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About the author
Bernard Levin
42 books6 followersHenry Bernard Levin, CBE (London School of Economics, 1952) was described by the London daily The Times as "the most famous journalist of his day". As political correspondent of The Spectator under the pseudonym "Taper", he became "the father of the modern parliamentary sketch," as The Guardian's Simon Hoggart put it. He went on to work as the drama critic for The Daily Express and later The Daily Mail, and appeared regularly on the satirical BBC programme, That Was The Week That Was. He joined The Times as a columnist in 1970, almost immediately provoking controversy and lawsuits, and left when the paper was taken over by Rupert Murdoch.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 18, 2018
I found this a fairly quick and easy read for the most part and generally enjoyed it. This book can be viewed one of two ways, with one view of it (a travelogue) succeeding and another view (a history book) not quite succeeding.
If one reads this book as a travelogue of southeastern France then it was not a bad read at all. It had some light humor, some interesting asides on French history, culture, and cuisine, and some good descriptions of the countryside and people. Though the author didn’t always become poetic in his descriptions of what he saw, sometimes he could be wonderfully descriptive, such as when he wrote about the famed white horses of the Camargue, as they “looked not just white, but dazzling marble, gleaming like the salt-pans beneath the brilliant sun,” or of a nearby farmhouse, “perfectly proportioned, quite without self-consciousness; it had plainly been built without an architect, but the harmony of its lines was beautiful, and the beauty was of that organic kind that comes from fitness-for-use.”
He had some interesting encounters, one of my favorite meeting Mme Dubocquet, “the living image of the Van Gogh portrait known as L’Arlesienne,” as not only does she bear an “extraordinary likeness,” but she received Mr. Levin “in a costume identical to that worn by Van Gogh’s sitter.” I also enjoyed his description of a Provencal bullfight, one in which the matadors (called rassoteurs) scored points (or proved their bravery, much the same thing) by scratching the back of the bull with something they wore on their hands, “a curious instrument half-way between a gauntlet and a knuckleduster.” Another favorite section related his brief adventure with hunting truffles with a M. Escoffier and his dog Black, “a little mongrel nine years old and going grizzled round the chops,” who Mr. Levin took truffle hunting, encouraging the talented dog with calling out “Allez, Black, allez Black, allez, allez, allez” (though one had to be quite quick lest Black eat the truffle he found). Also fun were his brief trial of goat herding and his all too brief stay in a monastic cell (and spending time with the monks) of Notre Dame d’Aiguebelle.
I liked his brief aside about St Paul-Trois-Chateaux, “which does not have three castles, or two, or even one; it has none, and moreover never has had any,” its name apparently a corruption of some sort. Having said that, that brings me to a complaint. Mr. Levin would provide whole passages of French with no translation! Sometimes I could puzzle out what was being said or what he had read through context, the maybe five or ten words of French I knew, and some dimly remembered high school Latin, but more often than not I was lost. Was I expected to know French?
He didn’t like everything he see, as much as he loved France. He had no use for the game of boules, calling it an “idiotic pastime.” He hated, hated, hated, nougat, visiting (for some reason) the town of Montelimar, where the “very air reeked of its sickly scent,” the very name “tasted of its horrible, bland sweetness,” where when he learned that Montelimar made some 30,000 tons of it annually, wrote “that this was the worst news I had heard for many years.” He also bemoaned litter and trash when he found it and had no use whatsoever for unfriendly dogs that were on the loose.
Perhaps predictably, for someone who craves authenticity and being off the beaten path, he raged again and again about tourism, “the inescapable plague of our times,” how tourism brings ruin, as towns both hate the visitors but also hate themselves for so desperately needing them. Several times the author would bemoan things long lost in southeastern France, lost to an unstoppable tide of too many tourists and too much kitsch. As this book was published in 1985, what Levin himself saw and wrote about is now something of a lost world itself.
Early on you get some sense of the author’s excitement about Hannibal, of “his stupendous feat in leading over the Alps a polyglot army, mostly of mercenaries, in winter, without roads or maps, fourteen centuries before the compass was invented.” Early on I thought I would get lots of information about Hannibal, his army, his elephants, Roman views of him, of Carthage…and you do, for a while, and again at the end (appropriately) when Mr. Levin crosses the Alps into Italy, but for most of the book it is really a travelogue of southeastern France. When he did talk about Hannibal (a favorite section had a long quote from Livy, detailing the ambush of Hannibal’s forces at the Gorges des Gats, when his forces were attacked by the Allobroges) it was interesting, but in the end, really, this is not a history book on Hannibal at all. I think the book as far as Hannibal went succeeded near the beginning, when the author did a good job of conveying excitement about Hannibal, and at the end as he experienced first-hand what Hannibal might have experienced crossing the Alps on foot (even braving an August blizzard).
If one reads this book as a travelogue of southeastern France then it was not a bad read at all. It had some light humor, some interesting asides on French history, culture, and cuisine, and some good descriptions of the countryside and people. Though the author didn’t always become poetic in his descriptions of what he saw, sometimes he could be wonderfully descriptive, such as when he wrote about the famed white horses of the Camargue, as they “looked not just white, but dazzling marble, gleaming like the salt-pans beneath the brilliant sun,” or of a nearby farmhouse, “perfectly proportioned, quite without self-consciousness; it had plainly been built without an architect, but the harmony of its lines was beautiful, and the beauty was of that organic kind that comes from fitness-for-use.”
He had some interesting encounters, one of my favorite meeting Mme Dubocquet, “the living image of the Van Gogh portrait known as L’Arlesienne,” as not only does she bear an “extraordinary likeness,” but she received Mr. Levin “in a costume identical to that worn by Van Gogh’s sitter.” I also enjoyed his description of a Provencal bullfight, one in which the matadors (called rassoteurs) scored points (or proved their bravery, much the same thing) by scratching the back of the bull with something they wore on their hands, “a curious instrument half-way between a gauntlet and a knuckleduster.” Another favorite section related his brief adventure with hunting truffles with a M. Escoffier and his dog Black, “a little mongrel nine years old and going grizzled round the chops,” who Mr. Levin took truffle hunting, encouraging the talented dog with calling out “Allez, Black, allez Black, allez, allez, allez” (though one had to be quite quick lest Black eat the truffle he found). Also fun were his brief trial of goat herding and his all too brief stay in a monastic cell (and spending time with the monks) of Notre Dame d’Aiguebelle.
I liked his brief aside about St Paul-Trois-Chateaux, “which does not have three castles, or two, or even one; it has none, and moreover never has had any,” its name apparently a corruption of some sort. Having said that, that brings me to a complaint. Mr. Levin would provide whole passages of French with no translation! Sometimes I could puzzle out what was being said or what he had read through context, the maybe five or ten words of French I knew, and some dimly remembered high school Latin, but more often than not I was lost. Was I expected to know French?
He didn’t like everything he see, as much as he loved France. He had no use for the game of boules, calling it an “idiotic pastime.” He hated, hated, hated, nougat, visiting (for some reason) the town of Montelimar, where the “very air reeked of its sickly scent,” the very name “tasted of its horrible, bland sweetness,” where when he learned that Montelimar made some 30,000 tons of it annually, wrote “that this was the worst news I had heard for many years.” He also bemoaned litter and trash when he found it and had no use whatsoever for unfriendly dogs that were on the loose.
Perhaps predictably, for someone who craves authenticity and being off the beaten path, he raged again and again about tourism, “the inescapable plague of our times,” how tourism brings ruin, as towns both hate the visitors but also hate themselves for so desperately needing them. Several times the author would bemoan things long lost in southeastern France, lost to an unstoppable tide of too many tourists and too much kitsch. As this book was published in 1985, what Levin himself saw and wrote about is now something of a lost world itself.
Early on you get some sense of the author’s excitement about Hannibal, of “his stupendous feat in leading over the Alps a polyglot army, mostly of mercenaries, in winter, without roads or maps, fourteen centuries before the compass was invented.” Early on I thought I would get lots of information about Hannibal, his army, his elephants, Roman views of him, of Carthage…and you do, for a while, and again at the end (appropriately) when Mr. Levin crosses the Alps into Italy, but for most of the book it is really a travelogue of southeastern France. When he did talk about Hannibal (a favorite section had a long quote from Livy, detailing the ambush of Hannibal’s forces at the Gorges des Gats, when his forces were attacked by the Allobroges) it was interesting, but in the end, really, this is not a history book on Hannibal at all. I think the book as far as Hannibal went succeeded near the beginning, when the author did a good job of conveying excitement about Hannibal, and at the end as he experienced first-hand what Hannibal might have experienced crossing the Alps on foot (even braving an August blizzard).
November 22, 2016
This book disappointed me. I was looking forward to understanding more of Hannibal's astonishing journey across the Alps with an army and elephants, but after the first few pages, they hardly featured. Instead, we got Levin, aware of his classical education and Britishness. He was often vivid in his description of scenery and his vignettes made good reading too. But on the whole he was disparaging, pompous, pleased with himself. This had the makings of a fascinating book. But it wasn't.
January 31, 2017
While not particularly engrossing, I still enjoyed reading this and found Levin's descriptions and asides interesting. For me it wasn't pompous and smug but can see how others might find it so. I read it for Levin's own journey rather than for insight into Hannibal, so wasn't bothered that the historical information was fairly cursory.
July 29, 2018
this was one of most satisfying, elightening, entertaining and witty books I have read in a very long time. I am reading as much of Bernard Levin as I have time for Total pleasure!!
January 23, 2016
Bernard Levin walked across the Alps, following in the footsteps of Hannibal. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have liked much of what he saw or many of the people he met. I'm afraid his constant snide observations and pompously obscure classical references turned me off so much that I've given up on this book. You could write a fascinating, energetic and topical book about recreating Hannibal's journey, but sadly Bernard Levin didn't.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews