The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

successive governments based in Paris have always known, the people of Périgord have an admirably tenacious disinclination to be run by anybody but themselves. It has been a privilege to get to know them, and to admire the courage of people who tried to stop a panzer division with nothing more than guns, grenades, and petrol bombs. As M.R.D. Foot has suggested, they may have decided the outcome of the D-Day invasion and thus of World War II. And as far as we know, their ancestors at Lascaux were the first to assert the extraordinary creative potential of humankind.
    Martin Walker
    Périgord, 2000