Dr Tony Shaw

The writer René Boylesvre (1867-1926) was born René Tardiveau on the same street as Descartes, which in 1867 wasn't named after Descarte...

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 ...

As far as Nantes is concerned, Le Passage Pommeraye is a huge attraction both to nantais and tourists from all over the world. So this can ...

It seems that the sisters Topette and Carafon – street musicians (with a violin) in Nantes during the 1920s, and from an upper middle-class ...

The writer and ship owner Pierre-Hildevert Lagarde was a friend of Jules Verne and the composer Aristide Hignard (also a friend of Verne, wi...

The initials of the surnames of Jean-Romain Lefèvre (1819-83) and Pauline Utile (1830-1922) provide the name of the world famous biscuit LU,...

It is ironic that the person responsible for the magnificent Passage Pommeraye in the centre of Nantes – which is certainly the biggest attr...

Sylvain Royé (1891-1916) was a poet born in Nantes who died in World War I in Douaumont. A plaque on his grave gives a few lines from his po...

Pierre-Gabriel Verne (1799-1871) and Sophie Allote de la Fuÿe (1800-87) were the parents of Jules Verne, who was born in Nantes and whose pr...

Philippe Gengembre (1764-1838) was born in Houdain, Pas-de-Calais, and was a chemist and inventor. He became an expert in powder chemistry a...

Oddly, Marc Elder (1884-1933) isn't featured in many guides to this cemetery, not even – at the time that I post this – in Wikipédia...

Paimbœuf is an interesting village on the Loire, a former outer harbour of Nantes. Some of its facades are odd, such as the one with compute...

Pierre-Michel-François-Chevalier (1812-63) was an author, historian and journalist born in Paimbœuf and who died in Paris. He was editor-in-...

With a name like Vue, how could such a village not have a boîte à lire ? And this at the time of the visit was quite a well-stocked one. I l...

Flora Moscovici's Le Temps entre les pierres .

On the face of it, the first banner here seems to be right on the button about the problems faced by all today: against globalisation, marke...

This may be a common lizard, but I'm from the UK where such views are rare. I also hugely respect animals, and consider this creature to...

I find this very interesting. An amateur notice tells me that one cigarette end can pollute up to 500 litres of water. Although I've no ...

La Carrière Miséry is in the process of life change. From a quarry for the extraction of granite, the place of the execution of counter-revo...