Dr Tony Shaw

Notre-dame de Lorette is a wayside shrine, a hermitage consisting of a chapel and a troglodytic dwelling within the commune of Saint-Épain i...

This hugely impressive sculpture by Max Ernst is called Aux cracheurs, aux drôles, au génie and was made between 1967 and 1968. Here, he pa...

Well, two boîtes à lire in Amboise anyway: I've no idea if there are any more.

Gonzague Saint Bris (1948-2017) lies in the family plot in the Cimetière des Ursulines in Amboise. Among numerous publications he wrote seve...

Another boîte à lire , and quite an impressive one too. Pity I couldn't figure out how to open the latch on the lefthand side, but in sp...

With its connections with the wonderful Raymond Queneau, it would be a disappointing not to see a boîte à lire , and sure enough there is on...

  Of course, Raymond Queneau was born in Le Havre, although his father Auguste was born in Saint-Épain in 1870. Auguste's family worked ...

The Moulin des Aigremonts in Bléré was built in 1848 and was a ' moulin cavier ': a building principally in the Anjou area having a ...

A rather different boîte à lire in Draché, and interesting to find a book on Descartes (both the philosopher and the nearby village which is...

La Pierre Percée was erected between 2000 and 5000 years before Christ, perhaps for sun worship, perhaps for a female divinity. This is the ...

The éolienne Bollée is named after its inventor Ernest-Sylvain Bollée (1814-1891), and is a wind pump which served to pump water. About 350...

At the side of a lake in Chambray-lès-Tours is a structure inspired by the moai on Easter Island. On our map it's listed as a ' roc...

René de Buxeuil (1881-1959) was born in Buxeuil (a few yards across the Creuse from Descartes but in fact in Vienne) as Jean-Baptiste Chevri...

René Descartes (1596-1650) was born in this house, although it only partly resembles the original building, having been altered several time...

An interesting boîte à lire (here called niche  à livres ) , by the church in Véretz, in the shadow of the white mulberry tree, and quite w...

The anarchist writer Eugène Bizeau (1883-1989) and equally anarchist Anne Bizeau (1882-1973) share this grave, under Anne's statue of a ...

I still have a number of posts to write on the Nantes area, although I thought it important to include some of our more recent visits. Near ...

Le Château de Saché has its origins in the Renaissance, although wings were added in the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries, and ot...