Author Peter Mayle died this week.

Throughout the 1970s Mayle wrote a dozen or or so educational books for children and teens with titles like Where Did I Come From? The Facts of Life without Any Nonsense and with Illustrations and Will I Like It” Your First Sexual Experience, What to Expect, What to Avoid, and How Both of You Can Get the Most out of It, he took time off to move from England to France and renovate an 18th century farmhouse.

This resulted in his 1989 international bestseller, A Year in Provence, chronicling his first year as a British expatriate in the south of France. Unintentionally, Mayle created a new genre of country-hopping, travel writing. The book was adapted into a television mini-series and even a radio drama.

Several more memoirs followed as well a series of popular, France-set crime novels, but his hilarious and charming A Year in Provence is what he’ll be remembered for.