THE ENGLISH AS THEY SEE OTHERS - ENGLAND REVEALED IN PROVENCE

Peter Mayle's best-selling accounts of his life in Provence have appea led to a wide audience in Britain but have also attracted harsh critic ism. It is argued here that these works, although ostensibly about Pro vence, are better analysed as myths for the English. The contrast with an account from the 1930s reflects wider social change, showing a mov e from a confidently colonial to a self-consciously 'anthropological' mode. Doubts about the authenticity of Mayle's accounts are related bo th to his use of free indirect discourse and other literary devices in order to convey ethnographic colour, and to ideological tensions in p ost-colonial Britain.