Francis needed Henry on his side against his hated enemy Charles V but in 1532 it was Henry who needed Francis on his side.

The Vatican Museums in Rome have only one work by Leonardo da Vinci, Saint Jerôme in the Wilderness, aka Saint Jerôme in the Desert. All the more astonishing then that the Vatican has loaned it to Château Clos Lucé* in Amboise.

Considering that the Queen’s Jubilee is on French television and all over French newspapers you can’t help thinking that France, as a nation, is very forgiving. Never mind the English illegal occupation which lasted on and off for over a hundred years and bankrupted France, watching Trooping the Colour you do wonder how many flag wavers are aware that the British Bearskin was French.

Wander round our garden after breakfast and before you know it, the day is gone. That butterfly on the aubrieta. What’s it called? No prizes for guessing. The orange tip.

M. Thierry Boutard, the can-do mayor of Amboise had a light bulb moment while looking through his mother’s photographs of the defunct flower festival in Amboise. Why not, he thought, have a go at bringing it back?

Search online for Leonardo’s inventions and up pop the usual suspects: Helicopter, parachute, tank, diving suit et al but hardly ever the one which actually worked in his own life time as opposed to hundreds of years in the future.

It will come as a revelation to many (me) but not to Shakespeare scholars that the genius story-teller from Stratford-on-Avon was a huge fan of Rabelais the genius storyteller from Chinon-sur-Vienne and that the inspiration for some of his crude, comic characters came from the crude, comic characters created by Rabelais seventy years earlier.

One of the oldest families of the French nobility took its name from the town. After surviving for five hundred years, it finally spluttered out in 1656. Its Arms are included on the town Arms. Loyal members over successive generations fought for king and country.