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Riviera Dreaming

Love and War on the Côte d'Azur

Riviera Dreaming cover

Riviera Dreaming

Love and War on the Côte d'Azur

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Pre-order. Available Mar 24 2026
$25.20 RRP $28.00 Website price saving $2.80 (10%)

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Description

The stories behind the most glamorous houses on the French Riviera.

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.

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.

Riviera Dreaming 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.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements


Part One – Lights and Music
1. Le Trident – 1925: Barry and Eric
2. La Mauresque – 1926: Somerset Maugham
3. The Glamorous Years
4. The Casa Estella – 1931: Beatrice Mai Cartwright
5. Le Château De L'horizon – 1932: Maxine Elliott
6. Villa La Reine Jeanne – 1933: Paul-Louis Weiller
7. Villa Le Roc – 1934: George Cholmondeley
8. Le Moulin – 1935: Eric Cipriani Dunstan
9. The Villa Aujourd'hui – 1938: Jack Warner

Part Two – All Change
10. Méfiance
11. The American Train – Barry
12. Waiting for Melpomene – Eric
13. La Domaine du Sault – Isabel Pell
14. The Champagne Campaign
15. The Hotel Martinez
16. All Change

Notes
Bibliography

Product details

Published Mar 24 2026
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 272
ISBN 9780755660469
Imprint I.B. Tauris
Illustrations Black and white illustrations
Dimensions 9 x 5 inches
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Maureen Emerson

Maureen Emerson lived in Provence for 20 years, wh…

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