Jim found this neat little film on YouTube which gives a brief bio of Mansfield and includes a dramatization of one of her most famous stories called "Miss Brill". The dramatization makes use of impressionist paintings and is quite interesting althought there is nothing quite like just reading the story for impact I think...or have Jim read it to you as he is a wonderful reader.
Mansfield even lived in Bandol for a short time (we have seen the plaque where she lived)but lived mainly in Menton which is close to the Italian border not far from Nice.
I often got Jim to read me my favourite Mansfield story which is "The Daughters of the Late Colonel". I asked him to read this to me when I was in labour with Richard but he thought something comedic would be better and chose a story he hadn't read but thought would be good from Graham Greene's "May We Borrow Your Husband? and Other Comedies of the Sexual Life" The story was called "The Over-Night Bag". Well, it involved a man travelling from Nice to London and when he was questioned by customs about what he had in the bag he replied "A dead baby". Jim tried to brazen it out for a bit but I soon protested that I didn't think a story about "a dead baby" was very appropriate when our child was about to be born!
We never did finish that story until about a month ago (almost 31 years later!) when we dug it out and I had Jim read it to me. It did turn out to be rather funny and the "dead baby" was just a ruse not to have customs take too close a look and to get through faster. How times have changed in terms of getting through customs!
