Burgundy: The Splendid Duchy. Stories and Sketches in South Burgundy

A transports readers to the South Burgundian highlands in the early twentieth century, where Percy Allen wanders through villages and forgotten byways that most English tourists still bypass today. The book opens at the Louée, a lively hiring fair in St.-Léger-sous-Beuvray, where peasants and children mingle amid stalls and negotiation, while the ancient Mont Beuvray looms overhead like a sleeping giant of Celtic legend. Allen weaves between past and present: Roman ruins, the great abbeys of Cluny and Citeaux that once bent European kings to their will, the rise and fall of the Valois Dukes. Yet this is no dry history. It is the Burgundy of local anecdote, of proud winemakers, of village festivals and the particular genius of a landscape that shaped empires. Allen writes with warmth and wit, gently mocking his countrymen who know Burgundy only as a wine list item while remaining genuinely enchanted by a region that was once a crucible of European civilization. For readers who love old travel writing, who crave the slower charm of a Europe that has since rushed past.