John Baxter

A preeminent writer on Paris, John Baxter brilliantly brings to life one of the most dramatic and fascinating periods in the city's history. During World War I, the terrifying sounds of the nearby front could be heard from inside the French capital; Germany's "Paris Gun" and enemy aviators routinely bombarded the city. And yet in its darkest hour, the City of Light blazed more brightly than ever. Its taxis shuttled troops to the front; its great railway stations received reinforcements from across the world; its grand museums and cathedrals housed the wounded; and the Eiffel Tower hummed at all hours, relaying messages to and from the trenches. At night, Parisians lived with urgency and without inhibition, embracing the lush and the libertine. The rich hosted parties that depleted their wine cellars of the finest vintages. Artists such as Pablo Picasso achieved new creative heights. And the war brought a wave of foreigners to the city for the first time, including Ernest Hemingway and Baxter's own grandfather, Archie, whose diaries he uses to reconstruct a soldier's-eye view of the war years. Uncovering a thrilling chapter in Paris's history, John Baxter's revelatory new book shows how this extraordinary period was essential in forging the spirit of the city we love today.

The City of Light During the Great War, 1914-1918

Paris at the End of the World

Thrust into the unlikely role of professional "literary walking tour" guide, an expat writer provides the most irresistibly witty and revealing tour of Paris in years. In this enchanting memoir, acclaimed author and long- time Paris resident John Baxter remembers his yearlong experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city. Baxter sets off with unsuspecting tourists in tow on the trail of Paris's legendary artists and writers of the past. Along the way, he tells the history of Paris through a brilliant cast of characters: the favorite cafÉs of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce; Pablo Picasso's underground Montmartre haunts; the bustling boulevards of the late-nineteenth-century flÂneurs; the secluded "Little Luxembourg" gardens beloved by Gertrude Stein; the alleys where revolutionaries plotted; and finally Baxter's own favorite walk near his home in Saint-Germain-des-PrÉs.

A Pedestrian in Paris

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World

The memoirs of a book collector are comprised of the author's whimsical recollections of his encounters with literary figures and trace his transformation from an Australian bush child to a Parisian penthouse occupant with a personal library worth millions. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Confessions of a Book Addict

A Pound of Paper

Disney During World War II encompasses the full range of material created by the Disney studio during the war, including ground-breaking training and educational films for the military and defense industries, propaganda and war-themed shorts and features, home front poster art, and the stunning military unit insignia that provided those serving the in the armed forces with a morale-boosting reminder of home. The book makes it clear how deeply Walt invested himself in the cause by patriotically placing his studio at the disposal of Uncle Sam. Replete with period graphics, Disney During World War II showcases Walt Disney's largely unheralded sacrifices in the pursuit of Allied victory, showing the inner workings of a wholesome family entertainment studio transformed almost overnight into a war plant where even the studio's stable of established characters were temporarily reinvented as warriors and team-oriented, patriotic American citizens.

How the Walt Disney Studio Contributed to Victory in the War

Disney During World War II

A witty cultural and culinary education, Immoveable Feast is the charming, funny, and improbable tale of how a man who was raised on white bread—and didn't speak a word of French—unexpectedly ended up with the sacred duty of preparing the annual Christmas dinner for a venerable Parisian family. Ernest Hemingway called Paris "a moveable feast"—a city ready to embrace you at any time in life. For Los Angeles–based film critic John Baxter, that moment came when he fell in love with a French woman and impulsively moved to Paris to marry her. As a test of his love, his skeptical in-laws charged him with cooking the next Christmas banquet—for eighteen people in their ancestral country home. Baxter's memoir of his yearlong quest takes readers along his misadventures and delicious triumphs as he visits the farthest corners of France in search of the country's best recipes and ingredients. Irresistible and fascinating, Immoveable Feast is a warmhearted tale of good food, romance, family, and the Christmas spirit, Parisian style.

A Paris Christmas

Immoveable Feast

IACP Cookbook Award Winner (Culinary Travel) Part Grand Tour of France, part history of French cuisine: an irresistible journey, from Paris to Provence, to find “the perfect meal” An expat Paris resident for more than twenty years, John Baxter began noticing an alarming trend: just as species of plants and animals are rapidly facing extinction globally, so too are the traditional ingredients and techniques of classic French cooking and eating. Indeed, he worried that the soul of the world’s most revered national cuisine is in danger of disappearing, as centuries-old ways of cooking, preparation, and farming wither away. Spurred to action, Baxter set off across the country on an unforgettable quest to taste the last great French dishes before they disappear forever—from Paris’s surviving haute cuisine establishments to the tiny local restaurants that still serve the remarkable regional dishes of Provence, Normandy, Cote d’Azur, and more.

In Search of the Lost Tastes of France

The Perfect Meal

Hemingway's Paris

A Paperback Original From the incomparable John Baxter, award-winning author of the bestselling The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, a sumptuous and definitive portrait of Paris through the seasons, highlighting the unique tastes, sights, and changing personality of the city in spring, summer, fall, and winter. “A man with a great appreciation of what makes Paris tick.”— Newsday When the common people of France revolted in 1789, one of the first ways they chose to correct the excesses of the monarchy and the church was to rename the months of the year. Selected by poet and playwright Philippe-Francois-Nazaire Fabre, these new names reflected what took place at that season in the natural world; Fructidor was the month of fruit, Floréal that of flowers, while the winter wind (vent) dominated Ventôse. Though the names didn’t stick, these seasonal rhythms of the year continue to define Parisians, as well as travelers to the city. As acclaimed author and long-time Paris resident John Baxter himself recollects, “My own arrival in France took place in Nivôse, the month of snow, and continued in Pluviôse, the season of rain. To someone coming from Los Angeles, where seasons barely existed, the shock was visceral. Struggling to adjust, I found reassurance in the literature, music, even the cuisine of my adoptive country, all of which marched to the inaudible drummer of the seasons.” Devoting a section of the book to each of Fabre’s months, Baxter draws upon Paris’s literary, cultural and artistic past to paint an affecting, unforgettable portrait of the city. Touching upon the various ghosts of Paris past, from Hemingway and Zelda Fitzgerald, to Claude Debussy to MFK Fisher to Francois Mitterrand, Baxter evokes the rhythms of the seasons in the City of Light, and the sense of wonder they can arouse for all who visit and live there. A melange of history, travel reportage, and myth, of high culture and low, A Year in Paris is vintage John Baxter: a vicarious thrill ride for anyone who loves Paris.

Season by Season in the City of Light

A Year in Paris

For more than a century, pilgrims from all over the world seeking romance and passion have made their way to the City of Light. The seductive lure of Paris has long been irresistible to lovers, artists, epicureans, and connoisseurs of the good life. Globe-trotting film critic and writer John Baxter heard her siren song and was bewitched. Now he offers readers a witty, audacious, scandalous behind-the-scenes excursion into the colorful all-night show that is Paris -- interweaving his own experience of falling in love, with a delightfully salacious tour of the sultry Parisian corners most guidebooks ignore: from the literary cafés of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and de Beauvoir to the brothels where Dietrich and Duke Ellington held court, where Salvador Dali sated his fantasies, and Edward VII kept a sumptuous champagne bath for his favorite girls.

Sex and Love in the City of Light

We'll Always Have Paris

An irresistible nighttime tour of Paris, past and present, by the bestselling author of The Most Beautiful Walk in the World Every guidebook to Paris is crammed with sites to see during the day, but visitors are often cast adrift once the sun sets and the Louvre, Notre Dame, and other tourist attractions shut their doors. Sadly for those who have retreated into their hotel rooms, it's only when darkness falls that the City of Light shines brightest. Full of as many unexpected detours and delightful digressions as the city itself, award-winning author John Baxter's Five Nights in Paris is the ultimate off-the-beaten-path guide to exploring the French capital after hours. Baxter leads readers on five evening tours across Paris's great neighborhoods. Each night's itinerary is selected for its connection to one of the five senses: the first, "Sound," explores the great jazz clubs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés; "Taste" samples the eclectic restaurants and bakeries of the Marais; "Touch" brings alive the city's legendary cabaret scene, including Montmartre's nearby Moulin Rouge; "Smell" describes Parisians' love of perfume and takes us to the infamous former opium fumeries along the Bois de Boulogne; and "Sight" traces the favorite haunts of the Surrealist artists, beginning in Montparnasse.

After Dark in the City of Light

Five Nights in Paris

In 1942 corporal John Baxter, a royal engineer, was captured by the Japanese in Indonesia. For the next three years he was held as their prisoner, during which time he was starved and beaten and contracted malaria, dysentry and diphtheria, for which he received no treatment. At one point he was given a fifty-fifty chance of surviving and moved to an isolation cell where he was kept awake at night by the sound of coffins being made for fellow prisoners who had not been so ‘lucky'. He spent the last two years of the war working in the hard labour mines in Kyushu, from where he witnessed the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki 40 miles away, and felt the scorching wind from the blast. Remarkably John Baxter survived these experiences and made it back to Britain - a journey which was an adventure in itself. In February 2009 he celebrated his 90th birthday. Having written up his diaries from this time, he has now decided to tell his story. It is a story not just of survival but of ingenuity, resourcefulness and quiet heroism. Using his training as a heating engineer, he found numerous, subtle ways of helping to disrupt the Japanese war effort, for example by sabotaging mining machinery and the rifles the guards had given him to repair. He also built radios to enable the prisoners to stay in touch with events in the wider world; cooking and lighting equipment to make their lives more comfortable; and artificial limbs for amputees. The book also offers revealing insights into the complex relationships between the prisoners and their guards, insights which overturn many of the stereotypes we are often presented with. For example John managed to befriend one of the guards, Hirano, who risked his life to bring him extra food rations. Written without a hint of bitterness, this is a fascinating and moving account of how one man managed to survive some of the harshest conditions faced by prisoners in the Second World War, while doing his bit to help the war effort. Illustrated with contemporary photographs and artefacts from his time in the camps, this book will be of interest to WW2 historians and the general reader alike.

Missing, Believed Killed

Paris's Village of Art and Sin

Montmartre

By the 1960s a copy of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock without its dust jacket was worth about #500. But with its dust jacket more like #2,000 - if you could find one. The last copy with a perfect jacket to come on the market changed hands at #50,000. Brighton Rock was a high-point, but first editions of other early Greene books weren't much less valuable. And then there were signed copies, foreign printings, limited editions, numbered and signed... rare copy of Greene's children's book The Little Horse Bus while browsing in a second-hand market in Swiss Cottage. It was going for 5p. It would also, fortuitously, be the day that he first encountered one of the legends of the bookselling world: Martin Stone. At various times cokehead, pothead, alchoholic, international fugitive from justice and professional rock musician (said to knock Eric Clapton into a cocked hat), he would become John's mentor and friend, and a central figure in this book. us to his world, the world of the fanatical book collector: not only the kind who buys from catalogues or at auction and takes away the booty in bubble wrap to store in metal filing cabinets - but also the sleuth, the one who uses bluff and guile to hunt down his quarry. Along the way we meet a cast of eccentric characters like Driff Field who only collects books about suicide or by writers who have killed themselves; we meet the completists, the condition freaks, the rich and famous - from Barry Humphries and Harvey Weinstein to Sarah Michelle Gellar. This is a book with real word-of-mouth potential that literary editors will go weak at the knees for; booksellers will bask in and the literati will adore.

Beyond the Fragile Geometry of Space

That Stanley Kubrick has maintained his mystique for nearly forty years is both a tribute to his exceptional powers as a film-maker and a consequence of his decision to live and work on his own terms, whatever the price. For decades his films have distilled the essence of the age - from 'Paths of glory' (1957), 'Lolita' (1962), 'Dr. Strangelove' (1964) and '2001 - A space Odyssey' (1968) to 'A clockwork orange' (1971), 'Barry Lyndon' (1975), 'The Shining' (1980) and 'Full metal jacket' (1987). With his latest film ('Eyes wide shut'), Kubrick has added to the gallery of indelible images that will last as long as the cinema. With the help of actors, writers, directors, technicians and childhood friends, John Baxter offers an account of Kubrick's extraordinary life and work.

A Biography

Stanley Kubrick

Stephen Baxter

Traces the life of the controversial Spanish director most famous for "Un Chien Andalou," "Belle de Jour," and "The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie"

Bunuel

Charles Boyer: The French Lover is the first biography of Boyer to exist in English in almost forty years. Author John Baxter artfully presents the often-tragic life of this often overlooked, yet profoundly impactful French actor. Baxter relates how Boyer (1899–1978) established himself in the theater and cinema of France, confidently transitioning from silent film to sound and making a name for himself as a romantic leading man in Hollywood through the early 1940s. During World War II, Boyer put his career on hold to become politically active on behalf of his occupied home country. Upon returning to the stage and screen, Boyer adapted effortlessly to postwar character roles in both Europe and the United States. He entered television in the 1950s as both producer and performer, and then remade himself as a comedy performer in the 1960s. Nominated four times for Academy Awards, he was honored by the Academy only once—a special honorary award received for his activities on behalf of France during World War II. In an insightful analysis of Boyer's choice of roles during and after World War II, Baxter shows that the actor possessed a shrewd perception of his image. Baxter reveals how Boyer, realizing his accent would always mark him as an outsider, both embraced and subverted that identity. Far from clinging to the performances that made him famous, Boyer showed a readiness to break the mold. Yet above all, Baxter argues, Boyer's greatest achievement was becoming the embodiment of exiles everywhere.

The French Lover

Charles Boyer

Hollywood in the Thirties

Biografie van de Italiaanse filmregisseur (1920-1993).

John Baxter

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