Python comic writes a memoir about renovation a French property

Eric Idle has written a book about the half century he has spent trying to turn a ramshackle property in the south of France into his dream home.  

Idle In Provence: A Brief History Of Thyme will be published by Ebury Press on September 10, tells the story of how the now 81-year-old comedian bought a run-down house in Provence in 1971.

He spent the following decades renovating it,  getting to know the locals and entertaining a steady stream of famous visitors.

Idle says he bought the French property partly in search of a quieter life two years after the launch of Monty Python's Flying Circus bought the troupe sudden international fame.

What followed, he says, was something like Peter Mayle's 1989 bestseller A Year in Provence – but with more mishaps and more laughs.

The book, which Idle has described as 'travel writing for those who love to stay at home', charts the slow transformation of the property from  a 'shack into a shackeau'.

It includes three sections of photographs and a collection of stories — many of them previously untold — about the people and places that have made Provence his favourite place on earth.

• Idle In Provence: A Brief History Of Thyme is published on September 10. It  is available from Amazon priced £22 in hardback – or from uk.bookshop.org, below, which supports independent bookstores.  

Published: 17 Apr 2026