One of the welcome signs of returning summer year by
year is the appearance of the Michelin Guide for motorists in France. The 1952 issue has just reached me, and I am left wondering once again why neither the A.A. nor the R.A.C. nor any enterprising publisher has been able to produce for Great Britain a guide comparable to the Michelin volume. It represents, of course, an accumulation of annual improve- ments, and its ingenious abbreviations and signs make it a marvel of compression. But with what sombre irony does it confront the Englishman today, for the hotel prices quoted drive home the apparent hopelessness of getting a fortnight's holiday in France on Mr. Butler's dole of £25. I say apparent hopelessness, because the Michelin Guide—and this is my only criticism of it—while giving the price of beds and meals at hotels in every town and village and almost every hamlet, does not give the pension rates, which are always on a relatively lower, often a much lower, scale. There can be no difficulty about obtaining them, for they appear regularly in that other admir- able publication Les Auberges de France. With this added. the Michelin Guide would be worth even more than the guinea charged for it today.
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