The French Run

A coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s between the working-class East End of London and bucolic rural France; two lads find themselves on the run and in the unexpected world of the classic French novel Le Grand Meaulnes. A love of literature, swearing and smoking combine in this witty, rude and beautifully lyrical rites-of-passage novel.
This is the story of a crazy summer I had more than sixty years ago. It started on our last ever day of school. When the teacher called out “Please finish writing and put down your pencils” we got up with the rest of the class and walked across the road to the pub to celebrate, still in our uniforms; two book-loving boys from the East End of London with an uncertain future. That’s when it all went wrong. We got dragged into a fight with some hooligans from another school; a weapon was pulled, a lad was injured, but nobody saw how badly because we panicked and ran before the police could arrive.
We’d already arranged a secret trip to France; the bags were packed, we’d got our passports and francs, and the Morris Minor was ready to go. So, we made a dash for it, worrying about the boy on the pub floor, anxious about the police pursuing us. We got to the ferry and crossed the channel. There was a very nervous road trip, driving south with pork pies and fondant fancies, looking over our shoulders for the gendarmes, disrespecting Ernest Hemingway, smoking, which we all did in those days, and singing along with The Beatles on the radio. Please Please Me.
When we finally reached Cousin Jean’s farm, it turned out he was trying to launch a mad make-or-break entertainment business based on the fabulous French coming-of-age story, Le Grand Meaulnes. So, it was agreed we could hide out with him, but only if we joined his circus as actors in the Harlequinade. And that’s where the story really began…

Paul Anness was born in East Ham, London, after the second world war, when rationing had finished, but before the end of National Service. His first job was at Billingsgate Fish Market with his Grandad, Johnny Ringshaw. He used to walk a mile to Johnny’s house at 4.15am every day to get a lift. Paul attended East Ham Grammar School, then got a place at Manchester University, paid for by the local council, to study English and American Literature. His thesis was on Ernest Hemingway. He found a job after university as a management trainee at Allen & Unwin publishers, and worked afterwards for Hutchinson, Ebury Press, Quarto and Conran Octopus. He started his own company in the late 1980s, which has since published over 2500 different titles, mainly non-fiction, beautifully-illustrated books about cooking, gardening, art, history and crafts; and children’s books of fairy tales, folk tales, history and craft projects. As an author, this is his first adult novel.