Sandy invented the mobile. His kinetic sculptures, delicately balanced, suspended shapes move in response to touch or air currents.

Sculpted by world famous Surrealist, Max Ernst, The Baby turtle Hatchlings. were born almost sixty years ago to adorn the basin of his wonderful Fountain in Amboise.

I find the bronze sculpture, ‘Danseuse’ on display in Tours Musée des Beaux Arts mysterious.

One of the reasons, apart from the usual displacement activities, it takes so long to write a book is because of the rabbit holes the writer tumbles down along the way, often because of accidentally stumbling over just one sentence read somewhere or other a long time ago.

You can visit the house where Max Ernst lived in Huismes and Sandy Calder’s Studio in Saché. Both villages about an hour’s drive from Amboise.

Francis I, King of France, hated Charles V of Austria, The Holy Roman Emperor, with every fibre of his being. He hated him even more after 1525 following the disastrous (for Francis) Battle of Pavia when a crowing Charles locked Francis in prison.

It’s a year now since French chanteuse Denise Le Brun took her final curtain and joined her friends, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Marcel Marceau in Showbiz Heaven.

A Photographic exhibition by Mark Playle