When researching a book I like to visit the sites where the action took place. Usually I take a number of photographs to remind me, when writing later, what the place was like.
It took me some time to realise that I have assembled something of an image library in connection with The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo: from this image of a house in Marseille where he once lived …
Charles Wells, the man who broke the bank, lived at this house in Marseille during the 1860s-1870s.
… to this letter written by the man himself …
Part of a letter written by Charles Deville Wells in 1912, introducing himself as “The man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo”
Over the coming days and weeks I’ll be dipping into the photo album to find other pictures such as these.