Auntie Beeb has done it again. I’m so enjoying these visits to France, Spain and Italy, revisiting books I have read and learning about those I haven’t.
Any lovers of Andalucia will relish the trips to Granada , Rhonda and the Alpujarras.
I wonder how many SF members have read Driving over lemons.
I have, twenty years ago, and I’m a Genesis fan too 
Time to reread perhaps.
That’s really amazing…insteresting coincidence! Yesterday I was looking through some old books we are getting ready to take to the charity shop, and came across a copy of Driving for Lemons. I’ve just started reading it.
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Me too. And I love Richard’s style of presenting. He’s having so much fun.
Ah… I can’t play the link… but you’ve convinced me it’s great… and I like Richard E Grant, so I’ll wait for the dvd’s to become available… 
There is discussion of theSpanish civil war of course and of Hemmingway’s love of bullfighting though it obviously disturbed him. I’ve long wanted to visit Rhonda after reading ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’. Granada is a favourite city with it’s fascinating Albaicin quarter.
I enjoyed the piece on Flamenco and see Mr Grant is similarly enthusiastic but not as much as with his foraging in the Alpujarras.
Re- Driving over Lemons, there were excellent sequels too.
You little gem… you’ve set me on the right path…
De rien !!
I suggest not starting with piece in France though everyone to their own. I didn’t find it of much interest apart from perhaps the Carol Drinkwater story. I’ve never visited the Côte d’Azure and I’m not sure I would enjoy it though I’m sure it must have been wonderful before it became a millionaire’s playground.
The Cevennes are more my thing.
I felt the same until a very generous neighbour lent(!) us her apartment in Golfe-Juan (the bay in between Cap d’Antibes and Cannes). Unlike Cannes it wasn’t blingy in the least, but the standard of seafood restos was very good. For me it was an interesting base from which to research the area where Picasso returned to Mediterranean culture and to classicism after Cubism and WWI. It was great being on the local beach where he used to draw in the sand at low tide and where the view out to sea hasn’t changed, also of course, the Picasso Museum at Antibes and the one at Valouris, where he made his amazing ceramics. And lastly, Cap d’Antibes itself with the Aleppo pines and where the modern beach holiday was invented by wealthy American bohemians like Sarah and Gerald Murphy in the early 1920s.
See https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/07/28/living-well-is-the-best-revenge
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How wonderful. Lucky you.