Sunday Feature: Deep France, Deep Problem?

Writer and poet Adam Thorpe discovers that beneath the smiling holiday face of southern France lie depopulation, unemployment, racism and violence. Delving beneath the surface of his adoptive Cevennes region, a land famously chronicled in Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Travels with a Donkey, Adam finds a hardy people, inured to dealing with poverty by centuries of tough times. Unemployment here is amongst the highest in France. Yet there are positive notes: here small, specialist vineyards and organic producers are flourishing, and in spite of the many problems, there's less dismay among the population than expected, as many take comfort in the region's agreeable climate