Peter Mayle again!

Hi everyone!
Today I want to tell you about Peter Mayle again! :)
I know that you still remember my presentation and that you want to know a little more about it.


Peter Mayle is one of the best-known British authors thanks to his series of books about Provence.
He was born in Brighton, but after the war his family moved to Barbados, where he went to school. 

At the age of 16 he left school and returned to England. He started to work as a trainee at Royal Dutch Shell – a multinational oil and gas company. He worked at the office in London. In this job he discovered that he is more interested in advertising,

so he wrote to one of the heads of Shell's advertising agency and was offered a job as a junior account executive, 

but he declined and eventually became a copywriter in New York. Later he worked as a creative director in US and UK offices. 

He spend 15 years in the advertising business and then he wrote his first educational book for children “Where Did I Come From?”. This was the first book in a series about sexual education, emotions of mothers and fathers and growing up. 

Other books in the series include “Will I Like It? Your First Sexual Experience, What to Expect, What to Avoid, and How Both of You Can Get the Most out of It”, “How to Be a Pregnant Father” and “Baby Taming”. He wrote a lot about children, parenting, marriages and divorces, and he himself has had 3 wives and 5 children, so he has a lot of experience in this topic.

He wrote 16 books before “A Year in Provence” brought him popularity. It was a new kind of book in his bibliography, 

because it wasn't about sex, but rather it was his memoir about his first year in Provence, his account of local events, people, atmosphere and landscapes. This book sold more than one million copies in the UK and six million around the world in the last 20 years. What is really interesting is the fact that this book was a big success, but in 1993 BBC produced a television mini-series which was a big failure. This TV series was placed by Radio Times at tenth position on a list of the worst television programmes ever made.

He also wrote 3 sequels to this book: “Toujours Provence”, “Encore Provence”, “French Lessons”, and also 5 more books about Provence. “Toujours Provence” retells the story of French villagers, with wine and sun landscapes in the background. In “Encore Provence” Peter Mayle wrote about his return to Provence, about people and places and how they changed. “French Lessons” talks about French kitchen and his love of food, about his first meeting with truffles, snails, etc. One of his books, “A Good Year”, is often mistaken with “A Year in Provence”. There is 15 years' difference between these books.