Join us for an evening with the irrepressible John Baxter to celebrate his latest love-letter to the City of Light, Of Love and Paris.

The French may not have invented love but they perfected it, and the laboratory in which they did so was Paris. James Joyce called the city "a lamp for lovers, hung in the wood of the world."

Paris has always drawn those who wish to experience the limits of love - intellectual, spiritual, and carnal. In Of Love and Paris, John Baxter turns the spotlight on some infamous lovers, from the medieval troubadors who seduced court ladies with flowery verse, to Man Ray, whose camera conferred immortality on his lover and model Kiki de Montparnasse, and Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, who turned their moans of sexual pleasure into a hit song.

Love in Paris, however, can take unexpected forms. Was the devotion to Marcel Proust of his housekeeper Céleste Albaret any less passionate than that of Anne Desclos to lean Paulhan, for whom she composed "the strangest love letter any man ever received"-the notorious novel Story of O, predecessor of Fifty Shades of Grey? Love has a multitude of faces, and some of the most mysterious and surprising are unveiled in Of Love and Paris

*

John Baxter is an Australian-born writer, journalist and filmmaker; he has called Paris home since 1989. He is author of numerous books, including the autobiographical The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris, Chronicles of Old Paris: Exploring The Historic City of Light, The Golden Moments of Paris: A Guide to the Paris of the 1920s, French Riviera and its Artists, and Eating Eternity: Food, Art and Literature in France.