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William Sansom writes only about Europe in this book and frequently of such familiar places as London, Vienna, the French Riviera and the Norwegian fjords.

But no matter what he writes about he brings to his subject his own original mind and his own sensitive reactions.

`` A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment '', he says.

`` Beneath any feeling he has of the good or the evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all.

To transmit that feeling he writes ''.

This may not be true of many writers, but it certainly is true of Mr. Sansom.

So in these pages one can share his wonder at the traditional fiesta of St. Torpetius that still persists in St. Tropez ; ;

at the sun and the heat of Mediterranean lands, always much brighter and hotter to an Englishman than to an American used to summers in New York or Kansas City ; ;

at the supreme delights to be found in one of the world's finest restaurants, La Bonne Auberge, which is situated on the seacoast twenty miles west of the Nice airport ; ;

and at the infinite variety of London.