THE MIDI
LANGUEDOC AND ROUSSILLON
Joy Law
1 873429 37 1
£15.95

312 pp including colour plates, text illustrations,
diagrams and two fold-out maps.

Joy Law has an intimate knowledge and vast enthusiasm for the region and has compiled a marvellous travelling companion.
The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne

Not since Freda White has anyone written with such erudition
and humour on the varied and fascinating part of the Midi
west of the Rhône, now revealing its secrets to more and more visitors every year. Joy Law covers the area streching through
Languedoc from Nîmes to Montpellier to the medieval towns of
Carcassone and Albi and across into Roussillon and the foothills
of the Pyrenees.

It is a region of dramatic contrasts, from the desolate mystery of the Camargue with its saltwater lagoons to the purple rocks of the Côte Vermeille, from the granite uplands of the Cevennes to the undulating wheatfields of the Lauragais, from the sunparched vineyards of the Corbières to the botanist's paradise of the Cerdagne. The churches and the abbeys, châteaux and hôtels to be found there are redolent of the region's intriguing past: of trobadours at the courts of Narbonne, Toulouse and Perpignan, of the Cathar heretics who met their death in the mountain eyrie of Montségur, of the merchants who grew rich from the cloth trade and the buildings of the Canal du Midi. As dinstictive for its food and wine as for its history and architecture, the Midi is rich, too, in anecdote, as Joy Law shows in this entirely original and entertaining guide.

Joy Law is the author of Fleur de Lys, a history of the kings and queens of France, and of Dordogne (Pallas Athene, 2000) – 'required reading' Times Literary Supplement. Formerly Editorial Director of George Rainbird Ltd and Publications and Exhibitions Officer at the Royal College of Art, she now divides her time between London and Périgord, where she and her family have had a house for thirty-five years.