How to Travel Incognito

Ludwig Bemelmans' 'How to Travel Incognito' is a unique blend of autobiography and fiction, inviting readers on a charming adventure through post-war France. The story follows Bemelmans as he is convinced by the charismatic Monsieur Le Comte de St Cucuface to adopt a princely identity for a journey filled with exquisite meals, grand hotels, and amusing anecdotes of the Comte's eccentric lineage. It's a gently humorous travelogue that also serves as an affectionate and melancholic reflection on a disappearing historical period and the art of living with grace, even in hard times. Ideal for readers aged 8 and up, it offers rich historical context and sparks conversations about identity, social class, and the passage of time.

Monsieur Le Comte de St Cucuface is a charismatic aristocrat fallen on hard times who slums his way around post-war France in elegant style, trading on his name and his exquisite manners. After a chance encounter on a train, he convinces a wide-eyed Ludwig Bemelmans to adopt the identity of an imaginary German Prince and join him in his ruse for a while. Together they set out on an enchanted adventure through an old France. They dine on the finest food and wine, stay at the finest hotels and chateaux, pausing only for St Cucuface to recount another amusing tale of his eccentric lineage. Originally published in 1952, blending autobiography and fiction to magical effect, How to Travel Incognito is both a gently comic travelogue and an affectionate and melancholic hymn to the passing of an ancient order. Book jacket.