Interviews

Charles Neal, Calvados

NealAOC

Charles Neal is a San Francisco-based French wine and spirits importer and the author of Armagnac and the just published Calvados: The Spirit of Normandy. We sat down over a cup of coffee during my recent trip to the Bay Area.

First of all congratulations! Calvados [...]

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Leonard Pitt, Forensic Fotographer à Paris

Another francophile who has not been “tainted” by too much formal education, Leonard is an actor mime, director, chocaholic and forensic fotographer who spends his days in Paris uncovering her secrets to share with us. We recently caught up over coffee at Le Select.

When did you first go to Paris? [...]

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Joan Z. Shore, A Thirst for Paris and Red Burgundy

New York City born and bred, educated at Vassar and distilled by over 30 years of living in Europe, Joan was a CBS News correspondent in Paris for 10 years and has contributed to Voice of America, CNN, The International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post. Her first book Saging-How [...]

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Bobbie Ann Mason

During World War II thousands of Allied pilots crashed or parachuted into Occupied Europe. Over three thousand were saved through the courageous efforts of ordinary citizens who hid them in their homes, created false identity papers and in many cases evacuated them over the Pyrenees into [...]

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Jeffrey Greene

Raised in a small town in Connecticut by his certifiable “numero” mom, educated in the cornfields of Iowa, ‘doctorized’ in Texas (PH.D from University of Houston,) been a tireless supporter of environmental causes and an educator. He currently lectures at the American University in Paris.

The delightful French Spirits celebrates the confluence of love (Mary) [...]

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Jean-Paul Rappeneau

At the start of World War II French cabinet members, journalists, physicists and spies of all persuasions gather at the posh Hotel Spendide in Bordeaux in Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Bon Voyage.

The acclaimed Director of Cyrano, Horseman on the Roof in San Francisco to promote the film greeted me at his Clift Hotel suite, selected [...]

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Alicia Drake

August weather in Paris can be schizophrenic. After a glorious sunlit day my evening apéro was delayed by a torrential downpour but twenty minutes later as I gazed out my window Notre Dame was back lit by a blue sky and framed inside a rainbow-schmuck, no camera!

So, just two days later [...]

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Carmen Callil

Bad Faith, the haunting tale of the French Eichmann, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix was triggered by Carmen Callill’s discovery that her therapist was his abandoned daughter.
TG: How long after the death of Darquier’s daughter did you begin to write the book?
CC: Twenty-eight years later–I began my research in 1998.

[...]

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Peter Mayle

Peter Mayle rises from his lobby armchair at San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel his face bronzed as befits a man who spends lots of time under the provençal sun. He is wearing a black suit with a pink open-necked shirt, black loafers and bright red socks. We find a window seat overlooking San Francisco’s [...]

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Kermit Lynch

From his twin bases in Berkeley and Provence American Kermit Lynch has been educating fellow Americans on the subtleties and pleasures of French wines for over 25 years.

It wasn’t a conspiracy, but he arrived on the scene at the same time that Alice Waters was revolutionizing the way Americans ate at her Provençal-inspired [...]

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