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Rating: 
Summary: BUY THIS BOOK NOW
Review: This massive hardcover book is the perfect compliment to it's big brother (North Atlantic Lighthouses. Both these books are the collective works of the worlds best lighthouse photographer (Jean Guichard). This is the man who uses analogue techniques and is not a Photoshop convert. (He's the man who brought you the famous photo of the lighthouse keeper who nearly gets hit by the wave.)The difference between this book and "North Atlantic Lighthouses" is that North Atlantic deals with the... ...North Atlantic(USA, Canada, Iceland, Scotland, England and Wales, Ireland, and France) while "Lighthouses of France" deals with... ...French lighthouses only. BUT, If your like me then the French lighthouses are the most attractive, alluring and charming lighthouses in the world. Lighthouses such as the famous La Jument (the mare), Le Four (the oven), Pierres Noires (Black Rocks). The book displays historic pictures which you won't see elsewhere (e.g. shots of relief of the keepers at Ar-Men.) You will also get the entire sequence of the wave and the keeper at La Jument. (Including the shot that everyone wants to see, "the aftermath", this is the shot that shows the keepers fate. It's located on page 92, my tip is take a close look at the doorway. Generally lighthouse books such as this have text accompanying it explaining the various lighthouses. Most books are very factual giving details such as tower hight, beacon type/colour, signal time, ect... (this is what happens in the other book North Atlantic Lighthouses, where the text is by Ken Trethewey). The information in that book is generally very interesting although it comes up a very distant second to the magnificent photos. Well in Lighthouses of France the text (by Rene Gast) is no distant second. Hell it's right up there on par with the photos. The text doesn't deal with the lighthouses directly. It mainly deals with the keepers and their interactions with these beacons of the sea. You'll get a taste for what it was like to build, man and maintain these monuments. The stories that are retold will astound, amaze and horrify. Find out what it's like to be one of the two keepers at Kereon on December 16th, 1989 at 6:10pm. When the two portholes in the kitchen were hit by an enormous wave,(where they were watching TV at the time) during a horrific storm. Read on as all the furniture is washed out the front door. A quote from Jean-Pierre Lecuq "we could hear the breakers forming about five hundred meters out. It sounded like a thousand bulldozers coming to crush us, then came the deafening crash of the wave exploding against the tower, which in fifteen years' service I had never seen shudder like that." Basically RIVETING reading JAW DROPPING Photos. BUY IT NOW... A TREASURE...
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