Improbable Walks

In this episode, we'll stroll down one of the most literary streets on the Left Bank--where Sylvia Beach once ran Shakespeare & Co, opposite Adrienne Monnier's La Maison des Amis des Livres. We'll talk about Hemingway, Janet Flanner, James Joyce, and other friends of the bookshops. 

In this episode, we walk along two beautiful quays on Ile Saint-Louis, and visit the address of not one but two Nobel Prize winners! I get to talk about one of my heroines, Marie Curie, and I hypothesize about ghostly conversations in the Pantheon...
As always, Improbable Walks theme music is performed by David Symons, New Orleans accordionist extraordinaire. 

In this episode of Improbable Walks, we stroll through a tiny old street where Balzac once lived...  Improbable Walks theme music performed by David Symons, New Orleans accordionist extraordinaire. 

In this episode of Improbable Walks, we stroll through the Palais Royal in central Paris, just steps from the Louvre. In this aristocratic garden, we'll talk about the astonishing life of the Chevalier de Saint-George, the Black French composer and internationally-renowned swordsman, who once conducted symphonies here. We'll walk beneath the windows where my favourite French author, Colette, used to write, and peer in the windows of a Directoire-era restaurant... Improbable Walks theme music perfomed by David Symons, New Orleans accordionist extraordinaire. 

In this first episode of Improbable Walks, we take a walk down one of my favourite medieval streets, rue de BIEVRE on the Left Bank. When I first moved to Paris, this street was still guarded by gendarmes because former President Mitterand lived here. But this tiny street's history starts at least 800 years ago...