One of the most famous bookshops in the world, Shakespeare & Company in Paris has a wonderful story behind it and has played host to many luminaries of the literary world.

On a nostalgic journey myself right now, I was intrigued to see that the two front sections of the bookshop are devoted to the ‘Lost Generation’ (Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Gerturde Stein) and the Beat Generation   (Kerouac, Ginsberg etc).

The place is a magnet for young people, especially Americans, and these long dead writers seem to possess a romanticism that has never faded.

Writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald came to Europe at a time when it was cheap to live in Spain or the South of France. You could take a house for the summer or live in a quaint hotel overlooking the sea while tapping out a masterpiece on a typewriter. It seems as though, for all privileges and conveniences we have today, many young people yearn for this simpler time when it was possible to get away from the world. And who can blame them.