Never having done a book-signing in a post office, I was intrigued when my local Postmaster in the Perigord said I was to be their artist of the month and would I please turn up with my books in French, English, Dutch and German for three hours on a market day morning, and very interesting it was. 

There was the French hotelier who bought both books in French because, he said, so many of his guests said they had come to his inn from the USA, Australia and Germany because they had enjoyed the Bruno books and he wanted to know what the fuss was about. 

Lots of German campers appeared with books they had brought with them on holiday, which I duly signed and then stood and smiled for photos with various sunburned Herren und Frauen. 

Then in the afternoon, my illustrious local wine cave, Julien de Savignac in Le Bugue, had organised a tasting of Chateau de Tiregand, presented by its owner Francis-Xavier de St Exupery. Over a glass of his splendid 2009 vintage, he told me that coachloads of Germans were coming to his tasting rooms, clutching their copies of my little guide to Perigord (it carries recommendations of several various wines and chateaux). 

My thoughtful German publisher has started inserting printed copies of the guide in all my books, and local hoteliers and restaurant owners tell me it’s bringing them lots of business.

In the novel ‘The Devil’s Cave,’ I had a character say ‘God will forgive me; it is his profession.”

The character, Eugenie, thought it was Voltaire. It wasn’t. It was the German poet Heinrich Heine (who lived most of his adult life in France), but a tough-minded editor thought it would be too pernickety for Bruno to check out the quote and later to correct her. I have felt guilty about letting Heine down ever since, particularly since he also wrote the lovely line: “How maddening it would be, said God, if there were no more Frenchmen.”

Among the many books the Nazis burned at the Berlin Opernplatz in their characteristically otiose attempt to purify German literature were the works of Heine, a great irony since he also wrote, in his play Almansor: “This was but a prelude; in the place where they start by burning books they will end up by burning people.” Fitting, therefore, that those words are now embedded in the ground at the spot where the Nazis lit the flames.

Heine was not prophetic by chance; he displayed a shrewd understanding of what was coming. In his History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, he forecast the Gotterdammerung that the Nazis would unleash: 

“Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A drama will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll."

Back in France for the summer after the book tour in the USA. 

It was 40 degrees centigrade in Arizona and it was 40 degrees in Perigord when I arrived and the swimming pool has turned green, the filtration system overwhelmed by the heat. 

It is too hot to sleep upstairs at night, but thanks to the thick stone walls the ground floor is cooler. We keep the shutters closed all day and rise before 6am to water the vegetables. The flowers look to be beyond saving. 

The basset hound spends his day spread-eagled on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor and the chicken cluster in the shade, empty two bowls of water a day and refuse to lay any eggs. Angela Merkel, the most maternal of the hens, is in the cool of the dog’s old kennel, sitting on 4 hens’ eggs and two pheasant eggs, so we may have some new fledglings in time for the arrival of the food photography team who will be illustrating the Bruno cookbook. 

The cookbook starts with a new short story, set in the St Denis market, which I wrote while on the American book tour.

I was delighted to see that the French diplomats at the consulate in Edinburgh celebrated Bastille Day with snails from my family's home island of Barra in the Scottish Hebrides, seat of the Clan McNeil of which my mother was a proud daughter. 

Regarded on the island as something of a pest, the snails are collected from the machair, the coastal moss and heather which endows the snails with a taste that French gourmets appreciate, much as it gives the malt whiskies of the islands their inimitable smoky and peaty flavor.

Back in the USA for book tour fo US launch of 'The Devil's Cave' staring Friday at one of my favourite bookstores, Politics and Prose, in DC. 

The heat and humidity could boil the fat off off a sumo wrestler's buttocks and the heat will be worse next week when I head for Texas, Arizona and the pleasure of seeing Bruno fans in the West. 

But first comes the chance of catching up with old friends in Washington.