NOTE DE L'ÉDITEUR : In 1929, Robert Graves — poet, novelist, critic, translator, mythologist — decided to leave an overpopulated and mechanised England in search of a place « where the town was still the town, and the country the country ». He chose Majorca because of its climate, good wine and honest, friendly people, and built a stone house in the mountain village of Deià where he brought up a family and wrote incessantly for over 50 years, and where he died in 1985 at the age of ninety.

Although his affection for Majorca over the years had inspired and pervaded much of his writing, it was not until his neighbour, the artist Paul Hogarth, made a series of drawings of the island in 1965 that Graves's superbly witty and perceptive drawings and essays on the island society and its history were complemented by equally magnificent illustrations. This widely sought-after book has been out of print for thirty years and is now, finally, available to the English reader again.

• « Majorca observed », London : Cassell, 1965

• « Les îles de la déraison », Paris : Stock, 1995

• Lucia Graves, « Une femme inconnue », Monaco : Éd. du Rocher (Anatolia), 2002
• William Graves, « Wild olives : life in Majorca with Robert Graves », London : Hutchinson, 1995 ; trad. espagnole : « Bajo la sombra del olivo : la Mallorca de Robert Graves », Palma de Mallorca : Olañeta, 2001