In 1483 two little girls arrived at Chateau Amboise to be brought up by the Regent of France, Anne of Beaujeu.

Louis XI’s daughter, Anne of France, was born when he was the Dauphin living on charity in the splendid Court of the duke of Burgundy.

Of all the children from the Courts of France who stay in my mind, Louis (XI) is right up there. The boy came into the world when the English army was at the peak of its brutal strength and his father, the Dauphin Charles (VII) had been disinherited in favour of Henry V of England.

Monarchs gives rise to Styles. One has only to think Victorian or Georgian. People know instinctively what the Louis-Philippe (1830 to 1848) style is. They may not be able to describe it but can recognise it. It’s pretty, dainty, delicate, elegant yet practical.

Many châteaux are little more than museums, many are cold, damp and forbidding but not Château Amboise. In winter, when frost is on the ground and giant logs are crackling in the giant fireplace you feel you could move in, pull up a chair and be quite at home.

We recently visited the nearby Grand Caves Saint Roch, the largest troglodyte in the region. This is our second visit to a wine cave, only nine hundred and ninety eight to go. Well, this is the Val de Loire, France’s third largest wine region with, if anyone is counting, four thousand vineyards, a thousand of which welcome visitors.

Named in honour of Doctor Bretonneau (1778–1862), a genius epidemiologist. He performed the first successful tracheotomy (entrance into the trachea through the muscles of the neck); successfully treated children suffering from rickets by feeding them cod-liver oil; made the clinical distinction between scarlet fever and diphtheria to which he gave its name; distinguished between typhoid and typhus; studied smallpox and introduced inoculation in the districts around Tours; was the first to realise that disease is caused by bacteria; discovered that the same illness manifests itself differently in different patients.

Rue Nationale (formerly Rue Napoleon).

The most famous Frenchman of all time, Napoléon (the acute accent seems to be arbitrary) Bonaparte (1769-1821) is one of the most controversial leaders in history.