RIVIERA DREAMING : LOVE AND WAR ON THE COTE DAZUR PB – MAUREEN EMERSON

p b The stories behind the most glamorous houses on the French Riviera. /b br / br / In 1926 Barry Dierks, a young American architect, arrived in Paris and fell in love with France. With his partner, an ex-officer in the British Army, he built a white, flat-roofed Modernist masterpiece that rested on the rocks below the Esterel, with views across the Mediterranean. They called it Le Trident. br / br / From the moment it was built, it captivated the Riviera. As commissions for more villas flooded in, Barry Dierks and Eric Sawyer, those two charmers , flourished at the heart of Riviera society. Over the years, Dierks would design and build over 70 of the Riviera s most recognisable villas for clients ranging from Somerset Maugham s Villa Mauresque and Jack Warner s Villa Aujourd hui to the Marquess of Cholmondeley s Villa Le Roc, and Maxine Elliott s Chateau de l Horizon, later the home of Aly Khan and Rita Hayworth. br / br / i Riviera Dreaming /i tells the dazzling story of the lives, loves and adventures that played out behind the walls of these glamorous houses and provides an unparalleled portrait of life on the Cote d Azur at the height of the Jazz Age. /p