Surely this church must have fallen down. Look at all that Ivy! Was it a ruin? Someone thought the view picturesque enough to make the postcard that we found in a St Ouen flea market, north of Paris. But no-one ever posted the card, so we don't know when it looked
Tag: normandy
A baptism of fire, on Juno Beach 6 June 1944
Our postcard photographer standing on Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer beach at the turn of the century could not have foretold the horrors this pretty seaside town would endure in 1944. By June 6 1944 the seafront villas are heavily fortified, a 50mm gun emplacement dominates the shoreline and a vicious web of beach defences stand between
The secret in the tower at Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët
The curious incident of the poet in the sea, at Étretat
A vintage postcard led us to a story about English eccentrics and French unflappability, at Étretat. A less daffodilly direction Algernon Charles Swinburne was a poet and quite possibly for his time, a genius. To the delight of biographers he was also a little unusual. Algernon was born in 1837 to a time that
Storms, shipwreck and survival, in Dieppe
As every mariner knows, the calm green sea in our postcard match is very misleading. In an instant winds can whip up this languid lurking mass into a fearsome monster. Which is exactly what happened on the evening of 2 January 1899. Unfortunately the steamer ‘SS Angers’ had already left Newhaven for