True Pleasures: A Memoir Of Women In Paris

Lucinda Holdforth has long been an ardent admirer of writers Colette, Nancy Mitford and Edith Wharton - three inspirational women who created great works of literature within just a few miles of each other in the heart of Paris. These women and their stories led Lucinda in turn to the women of Paris who they themselves had so admired. However, it never occurred to Lucinda during her visits to Paris to track down the haunts of her favourite women writers.

Marie Antoinette, Napoleon's Josephine, Germaine de Stael, Nancy Mitford, Colette, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, Pamela Harriman, Coco Chanel - each of these women emigrated to Paris at some time during their lives and many of them made their permanent homes there. They lived and loved to the full because Paris is the kind of city where a woman can make or remake herself.

Many of these women came because they fell in love: with men and women. And they all succumbed to the allure and seduction of the city. From the Paris of the Revolution, to the Paris of the World Wars and finally the Paris of the new millennium, Lucinda evokes the many incarnations of the City of Light through a swag of extraordinary and fascinating women.

This is a delightful, charming and very personal approach to history. It's a memoir of sorts that captivates and inspires - a kind of literary walking tour through the cobblestoned lanes of the history of one of the most seductive cities on earth as told via the lives, loves and losses of some seriously fabulous women.