John Berger   The Success and Failure of Picasso (Penguin, o/p; Vintage). The success is self-explanatory; the failure (and the tragedy) lies in Picasso's poverty of subject matter - or so Berger argues in this brief and highly persuasive book. Perhaps the best one-volume study of Picasso in English.

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Brassaï   The Secret Paris of the Thirties (Thames & Hudson, UK, o/p). Extraordinary photos of the capital's nightlife in the 1930s - brothels, music halls, street-cleaners, transvestites and the underworld - each one a work of art and a familiar world (now long since gone) to Brassaï and his mate, Henry Miller, who accompanied him on his nocturnal expeditions.

David J. Brown   Bridges Across Time (Mitchell Beazley, UK, o/p). A very beautiful book about both the technical and aesthetic aspects of bridge-building; not exclusively about France, but includes many French bridges from the Roman Pont du Gard to the Pont d'Avignon, Eiffel's constructions and the state-of-the-art Pont de Normandie across the Seine estuary.

André Chastel   French Art: The Ancien Régime 1620-1775 (Flammarion). This sumptuous volume by a renowned art historian combines exquisite pictures with political, cultural and artistic detail to illustrate the painting, sculpture and architecture that emerged during the reigns of Louis XIII, XIV and XV.

Kenneth J. Comant   Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800-1200 (Yale UP). Good European study with a focus on Cluny and the Santiago pilgrim route.

Norma Evenson   Paris: A Century of Change, 1878-1978 (Yale UP). A large, illustrated volume that makes the development of urban planning and the fabric of Paris an enthralling subject - mainly because the author's ultimate concern is always with people, not panoramas.

Edward Lucie-Smith   A Concise History of French Painting (Thames & Hudson, US, o/p). If you're after an art reference book, this will do as well as any... though there are of course hundreds of books on particular French art movements.

John Richardson , The Life of Picasso: Vol 1 1881-1906 (Pimlico; Random House) and Vol 2 1907-17 (Cape; Random House). No twentieth-century artist has ever been subjected to scrutiny as close as Picasso receives in Richardson's exhaustive and brilliantly illustrated biography. The author has taken many years to complete the first two volumes, and there's a risk he'll never reach the end, but the mould-breaking years have now been covered, and it's impossible to imagine how anyone could surpass Richardson's treatment of them. Volumes 3 and 4 are in the pipeline.

Vivian Russell , Monet's Garden (Frances Lincoln; Stewart Tabori & Chang). Sumptuous colour photographs by the author, old photographs of the artist and reproductions of his paintings. Superb opening chapter on Monet as "poet of nature" and a detailed description of the garden's evolution, seasonal cycle and its current maintenance which will delight serious gardeners.

Gertrude Stein   The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas (Penguin; Vintage). The goings-on at Stein's famous salon in Paris. The most accessible of her works, written from the point of view of Stein's long-time lover, gives an amusing account of the Paris art and literary scene of the 1910s and 1920s.

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