Julian Barnes’s long and passionate relationship with France began more than forty years ago. As sceptical observer on family motoring holidays, assistant in a school in Brittany, student of the language and literature, author of Flaubert’s Parrot and Cross Channel, he has criss-crossed the country and its culture. The essays collected here, written over a twenty-year period, attest to his clear-eyed appreciation of the Land Without Brussels Sprouts. He ranges widely, from landscape to literature, food to Flaubert, film and song to the Tour de France. His humour, timing and intelligence never falter. When Picador published his Letters from London, the Financial Times called him ‘our finest essayist’. Something to Declare confirms that judgement: it is a great literary delight.