Nice choisit la France

Yesterday we responded to a circular from a publisher in Nice who was hosting a lecture / book launch for a volume on the transfer of Nice to France in 1860. Nice town was full of posters and expensive banners with "150 ans, Nice choisit la France", which sounded a little contrived to one who had had to swallow the disgruntled Italian version of events as an undergraduate.

The lecture was to take place in a tiny underground (in both senses) theatre next to the ultramodern station of the narrow gauge Chemin de fer de Provence railway line. The tracks cross busy streets without level crossings, and the BH remarked upon the usual lack of safety provision. There were traffic lights, though, and strangely for once the cars and mad scooter riders screeched to a halt. We thought, just for an instant, that maybe Nice's civisme was an exception to the exception française, but no. Rattling round a blind bend came an antiquated but surprisingly speedy railcar which shot past the road users with millimetres to spare and whooshed into the station. The line climbs up into the Alps and ends at Digne. Sounds like a wonderful trip.

The theatre foyer, about the size of a school tuck shop, was full of a strange mix of people. Some were of that instantly recognisable French breed of self satisfied 'intellectuals', who not only read the same books but dress in the same expensively casual chic way. Others, however, had an outdated air, as if they had alighted from the narrow gauge train maybe sixty years ago. They were the local history and local bore brigade, a fearsome prospect to any lecturer, and ones whom the BH instantly recognised from her long stint at the IFE.

The book that was being promoted was one of a series on Nice history which combined an academic introduction with a short, purpose-written historical novel. I looked at the jacket notes of the other volumes in the series. The synopses of the stories were masterpieces of cynical assemblage. A kind of mad 'cut and paste' between completely different publisher's lists. These were not 'romans historiques' but rather 'histoire romancée' of Mills and Boon quality. I didn't have time to look at the historical introductions properly, but they seemed attractively and accessibly presented. Was this naff combination a huge embarrassment or was it a marginally cynical piece of genuine innovation in popularising local history? An intriguing question.

No time to reflect: we were promptly herded down into the airless basement, already heated by theatre lights, a computer and a data projector. Next to my left ear, just to make sure, I had the noisy outlet from the ventilating fan of the sound system warming me in case I felt a sudden chill. The publisher gave a brief and relaxed introduction to the two speakers, the historian and the novelist (who turned out to be Nice's city archivist).

Then followed the slow deliquescence of the flesh in the heat, accompanied by the struggle against ineluctible sleep as the historian droned on in an almost inaudible monotone. Gradually, though, once we were well soaked in sweat, the interest of what he had to say granted us a stay of execution from the hyperthermic coma. The interplay of local issues and geopolitics was put across with considerable skill. He was followed by the archivist-novelist, a chinless wonder according to the BH, who gave a none too brief resumé of his masterpiece. I have no idea what the quality of the writing was like (who knows, maybe it was a real page turner), but from the précis he gave of the story I have no strong desire to read it.

As the two speakers relayed each other before the spotlights, the chinless wonder visibly dripping sweat down his shirt, almost as if he had peed himself via his armpits (a public circumstance I was all to familiar with myself), the two antiquated gents in front of me blocking the view, one who with his wing-mirror ears and bald head looked like Plug from a comic of my childhood, and the other like an unkempt Napoléon III, pointedly and more than audibly spoke to each other in Niçois dialect. It was like hearing Cornish nationalists speaking Cornish. Voices from the grave seriously and laboriously reproduced by modern fanatics without humour. This was a bad sign, and the BH with a nod in my direction indicated that the dreaded intervention /correction sequence from learned bores was about to begin. And so it did. If you substitute artificial Niçois for studiously de-Englished Scots, then we were back at the Institut talks in Edinburgh.

Realising that any pretence at presenting their book on their terms was now hopeless, the publisher and the speakers resorted to the oldest trick in the book, namely commenting on old photos. The audience were over the moon, with choruses, of delight, anecdote and genuine local lore coming out. Yes, what they really wanted was for their lives and stories to be in a 'history' book, not invented other people's ones.