Long-time AAPA member Gerry Dryansky has won the American prize in the Gourmand World Cookbook competition for 2012, for “Best Culinary Travel Guide” with his latest oeuvre, “Coquilles, Calva and Crème: A Love Affair with Real French Food,” published by Pegasus Books. Co-written with his wife Joanne, the book brings to life some of the most fascinating, glamorous food years in France—evenings with Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent, historic wine auctions and memorable banquets. The Dryanskys travel through kitchens, farms, and vineyards, offering a savoury experience that can be …

Dear AAPA members,
A New Year is upon us and it looks set to be about as busy as the one we have just seen out. The French, European and international situations loom as being as news-generating and as demanding as they were in 2012.
This will be a challenge for us all, but it also provides us with opportunities to enhance the activity of the Anglo-American Press Association and allows us to make our mark again on the ever-active media scene here in France.
We achieved a lot in 2012: 16 premier …

AAPA member Harriet Welty Rochefort, author of “French Toast” and “French Fried”, continues her probing into the French way of life with her third book on the subject: “Joie de Vivre: Secrets of Wining, Dining, and Romancing Like the French” (St. Martin’s Press, Oct. 2012).
Analyzing the various forms that French expressions of joie de vivre take, she comes up with a few theories of her own.  For one thing, she writes, French joie de vivre doesn’t always turn up where you think it might. The French, she reports, find great …

Rain or shine, the Anglo-American Press Association’s Annual Gala is one of the year’s highlights. This year it was definitely rain. But the inclement weather dampened no spirits.
 
This year the hosts were U.S. Ambassador Charles Rivkin–who along with the British Ambassador is an honorary AAPA co-president– and his wife Susan Tolson.
 
The Ambassador welcomed members and guests to his official Residence in a speech that covered the proud 105-year history of the AAPA and explained how a diplomat’s role is not so different from a reporter’s. He described his job as …

 
 
 
 
 
Dear Fellow Members,
The new AAPA committee held its first meeting November 28 and rapidly got down to work drawing up an exciting and challenging programme for the coming year. The well-attended meeting compiled an eclectic list of events covering potential guests from political, economic, industry, banking, culture, defence and media backgrounds inFranceand beyond. We hope that we can cater to the broadest tastes and interests of our members.
We were all very enthusiastic about taking on the challenge of getting high-profile figures to AAPA events in what promises to be a …

Peter Stephens, a long-time Daily Mirror Paris bureau chief and one of the towering figures of the post-World War II foreign press corps, died at his home in the 16th arrondissement on Sept.30. A former president of the AAPA, he was 92.
Born inEnglandin 1919, Peter first became fascinated byFrancewhen he arrived with the British Army during World War II. He had been training to be a doctor when the war interrupted that career. Peter sailed back across the Channel after he was demobilised and first worked in broadcasting, for the …

We are sad to announce that John D. Panitza, former Managing Editor of
Reader’s Digest and a long-time member of AAPA, died in Paris on July 28 at the
age of 80 after a long struggle with cancer.
 
“Dimi,” as he was known to all, worked for the Digest for 42 years, most of them
as head of its European Editorial Office in Paris, which produced articles for the
magazine’s numerous editions around the world. He also helped create several
Digest-sponsored books, including The Bridge at Spandau (about the Hungarian
revolution in 1956), The Longest Day (about …

Our annual spring gala held at the British Embassy residence this year on June 1 had all the necessary ingredients for a successful event: a wonderful setting, a brace of top-level diplomats, fantastic weather, high-caliber guests and great catering. Nearly 100 members and their guests listened as our host and honorary co-president, British Ambassador Peter Westmacott made us feel at home with his warm welcome peppered with entertaining anecdotes, followed, likewise, by his U.S. counterpart, Ambassador Charles H. Rifkin. Our president, Virginia Power, in her comments, then noted we were …

The Association’s Author’s Night on March 28 filled John Morris’ loft with people eager to learn what inspires authors and how they get their books published. The speakers were a brochette of AAPA member-authors, including Christopher Dickey, Peter Gumbel, David Pike, John Morris, Don Morrison, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Alan Riding, Harriet Welty Rochefort and Gerry Dryansky, with a collective oeuvre ranging from fiction to food to history.
Publishing, having evolved from a calling among people devotedly beneficent toward literary discoveries, has gone on from being a profit center for conglomerates and blockbusting …

We gathered for the burial mass under a gray, damp sky on the morning of December 28 at the Eglise Saint Thomas d’Aquin in the 7th to remember and reflect on the life of longstanding AAPA member Pat Thompson, amid prayers, music and a sense of great loss among some one hundred fifty attending relatives, friends and colleagues.
 
Conducted in English by the American priest Francis Finnigan, the mass went well beyond Bible readings and prayers, accompanied by songs, cello and organ playing, and ended with moving tributes to Pat as …