The Lazy Meuse — Bernard Newman

From humble beginnings -- a small stream near Langres in northeastern France -- the river Meuse swells into a torrent, passing through Belgium before finally meeting the sea in Holland. With his trusty bicycle, George IV, Bernard Newman tracks its length, finding himself a variety of fortuitous encounters and comic misunderstandings along the way. Speaking to a progression of spirited locals, each with his or her own story to tell, Newman learns the ancient tale of the Meuse, along whose banks Joan of Arc once lived to weird and wonderful folktales that originate and where two European world wars were fought.

The Lazy Meuse offers a comical and ultimately optimistic jaunt across 1940s Europe and a poignant account of a landscape and people scarred by hardship and war. Between local history and mythology, tradition and change, conflict and peace, the Meuse flows on.