in Beaujolais, where Bernard Pivot grew up, residents share their memories of the man of letters

The famous writer and presenter, who died on Monday, regularly returned to Beaujolais where he had spent part of his childhood.

Bernard Pivot died Monday May 6. The original Lyonnais, born in the capital of Gaul to grocer parents, had remained closely linked to Beaujolais. Particularly north of Lyon, his motherland, where he took refuge as a child during the war and where he returned regularly, notably to Quincié-en-Beaujolais.

“We met him at the bakery, everywhere, in all simplicity. And here too.” Here, it is the Bernard Pivot library which Christelle Santailler is in charge of: “It was also, under his leadership, that a library was created here. It was in 1988 and there were very few small village libraries. And it’s true that very quickly, it attracted a lot of people due to the quality of the donations. We have a few books with annotations, small erasures…”

A school in his name and loyal friendships

Books given by the journalist. Twice a year, Mayor Daniel Michaux goes to Paris to collect them. “Publishers sent him a lot of books. So obviously, he reserved a part to supply the Quincié library, since he was at school in Quncié-en-Beaujolais during the Second World War. He had friends who he kept it throughout his life and he was very attached to the village, to Beaujolais, to the people here.” assures the chosen one.

“Every time I met him in Paris at his home, he asked me about village life, the associations, the result of Beaujolais basket. And then he gave his name to a Bernard Pivot Quincié Beaujolais Village vintage.”

Daniel Michaux, mayor of Quincié-en-Beaujolais

at franceinfo

About ten kilometers away, in Vaux-en-Beaujolais, there is the Bernard Pivot school. “He is someone who did a lot of dictations and he inaugurated the school”, says a student. In 2013, the local child inaugurated the school by reading a dictation written for the occasion in the courtyard. Jean-Charles Perrin, the mayor of Vaux-en-Beaujolais, remembers. “On June 22, 2013, the day of the inauguration, there were 200 to 250 people in the school with tables and Bernard Pivot doing dictation. It was a very good memory. An exciting character, someone of very simple, I really appreciated this meeting”, assures the city councilor.

The dictation is now displayed in the school entrance.“Not very easy though.”smiles Sébastien Rizzo, the school director, before reading the text: “Once upon a time there was a young writer who published sad books without success. He lived in a gray and polluted town. He was beginning to decline when he received from a notary the announcement that he had inherited, from an grandmother, a property in Vaux-en-Beaujolais (…) When he is old, he will write very fruitful memoirs. In the coming days, the students will work on this text. This is what the director planned as a tribute to Bernard Pivot.