The engineering genius (no other word will do) Gustave Bönickhausen was born in France December 1832 and died in France December 1923.

While in Paris, we were delighted to bump into an old acquaintance, Jean-Paul Othoniel. Well, not literally, although we did meet him in the Church of Our Lady of Bout-des-Ponts, Amboise when his installation Tour d’Or Blanc was inaugurated on 16 October 2021.

On 1 November, we were delighted to have a reason, a very good reason, to go native. We felt very French as we joined the throng of people who pass our window every year bearing gigantic pots of beautiful chrysanthemums on their way to the old, very old, cemetery in Amboise.

Catherine suffers from a bad press but she was not the Lady Macbeth portrayed by some biographers or, as some historians make her out to be, a monster with two heads.

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was brought up in Château Amboise with Catherine de Medicis many children. On Mary’s marriage to Catherine’s son Francis (II), Catherine gave her a rope of precious black pearls.

Simone Lacour, the world renowned artist, lived in Rilly-sur-Loire, a small community near Amboise. Renowned. Not famous. It’s doubtful even art anoraks have heard of her. Is this because, with a horror of being classified, she was never part of any art movement?

Intrigued by the neglected home in Amboise* of the once famous writer Jehanne/Joan Orliac, we went in search for her grave and for the once famous Golden Gates which stood next to her house.

After more than five hundred years, thousands of books and millions of words written about Leonardo da Vinci, there are not many mysteries left surrounding him.