About the author.

Jim Ludden spent his working career in the world of Advertising and Design. He also worked in Industry, mainly in editorial design. He worked in North America and Continental Europe before opening his design agency with offices in London and Brussels from where he provided design services to the European Commission and a wide range of corporate clients.

 He came late to the crowded world of writing children’s books, persuaded by his children to set down in print some of the tales he made up for them on their long car journeys to holiday destinations in Provence. His debut children's book, The Origins of Nougat and Tales of Courtly Love, evolved from a made-up story on a long car journey through the region of Montelimar, which was the centre for producing nougat in Provence.

 Now with many grandchildren, he is more aware of children's books and finds that an opportunity to talk up to children and enthuse them with the elegance of language has been missed. He believes that children from an early age should be encouraged to develop an inner ear for the beauty of words and the lyrical rhythm of language.

Most of the family holidays were spent in Provence and after retirement, the author lived in the region described in the book. ‘He smelt the thyme and drank the wine’ and walked the Aurelian Way, the Roman road that runs along the Northern side of the chain of the Alpilles mountain range. His love of the region shines through this book, and he hopes that one day, with this book as a guide, his grandchildren will walk where he walked and see what he saw. They will stop on a road lined with plane trees and look across the poppy fields to a typical old stone mas set against the blue line of the Alpilles. Like him, they will smell the lavender and the rosemary and will marvel at the beautiful, dark-haired women of Arles wearing their traditional costumes. They will also see the horsemen of the Camargue gather for the Feast of their patron saint. All these treasures will not substantially change over time. The smell of lavender and pine will hang heavily in the air; the immortal Cigale will still be the iconic sound of summer, and the sun will still set over the ruins of the Citadel of Les Baux.