Marseille

Available for over a year

Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns introduces his new series of essays on five great cities which have been influenced by African migration, as he discusses Marseille. Looking for inspiration to Ian Fleming's 'Thrilling Cities', Lindsay wants to eschew the loud, brash main avenues and explore instead the quiet back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favour of lesser known, more local and edgier haunts. But he also wants to ditch the colonial mindset always looking for European influence, and instead examine how these cities have been affected by migration from Africa. And in Marseille, the first of his five, Lindsay finds it all: a truly Franco-African metropolis, infused with gastronomic, religious, linguistic, musical, sartorial and literary influences from the other side of the Mediterranean. Producer: Giles Edwards