The Four Storey Mistake

We’re currently staying in Champsecret in Normandy, not far from the pretty spa town of Bagnoles-de-l’Orne. The architecture of this small town is unusual, a mix of Swiss, French and neo-Gothic. The term applied locally is “la belle époque”.

As we explored I was reminded of one of my favourite childhood books - Elizabeth Enright’s The Four-Storey Mistake.

This is my copy of the book published by Puffin in the 1970s. I now have a first edition, too, but the picture on the front is so similar to the houses we discovered in Bagnoles-de-l’Orne, that I couldn’t help but remark on the similarity.