The Man who Married a Mountain

LIFE IN A POSTCARD was Rosemary Bailey's bestselling memoir of living in a small village in the French Pyrenees. Now she sets off in search of the man who married a mountain. The nineteenth-century explorer and mountaineer, Henry Russell, combined a thirst for travel with a typically French attachment to his own region. He climbed every mountain in the Pyrenees and revelled in nature's extremes; from fierce tempests to dazzling snow. Vignemale, a mountain in the French Pyrenees, inspired his passion above all. In the course of her quest Bailey finds not only Russell but a whole cast of nineteenth-century visitors, striding up the glaciers in tweed jackets and hobnailed boots. English, Americans, Russians and many others, from Tennyson to Flaubert, colonised the Pyrenees in search of the Sublime, the Picturesque and the Beautiful. Accompanied by her young son Theo, Bailey visits all the romantic sights of the Pyrenees between the gentle shores of the Mediterranean and the wild waves of the Atlantic; discovering astonishing waterfalls, lakes and valleys. Bailey weaves together Russell s story with her own experience of the Pyrenees, living in a converted monastery and sharing her life with the dreamers, hermits and city escapees who still find refuge in this magical land. THE MAN WHO MARRIED A MOUNTAIN is a celebration of the beauty and history of the Pyrenees, a wonderful way of life and some remarkable adventures.