A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to see Richard Edmonds’ brilliant A Gentleman of Rome about the harrowing last days of the tubercular poet John Keats told entirely through the words of his own movingly tragic letters home. So I was delighted to be invited to view his latest creation “A Summer In The South” based on the work of French novelist, belle lettriste and French Academician Colette before a packed Sunday night audience at Birmingham Rep’s main house.

There’s no one in English Lit. remotely like Colette. Her early success came in the 1890s when entrepreneur husband Monsieur Willy locked her up until she finished some slightly scandalous, highly fictionalised novels about her country schooling which he then marketed like dirty postcards. Escaping from him she became one half of a touring again slightly scandalous music hall act but went on to become a national treasure who took a frank, very French look at the pleasures of life, especially loves of the unconventional kind.

Her work, so beautifully read here by the marvellous Robert Powell and sublime Sian Philips explored with humorous relish all Colette’s lust for enjoyment both simple and exotic. Through vignettes of a country childhood with its small but indelible pleasures to vivid snapshots of her mother Sido we felt the warm breath of seasons from before the first war, all now long vanished.

Her later works focused on the Parisian demi-monde’s hectic passions and grave pleasures. Her most famous novelette (to the non-French speaking world) was Gigi, later a famous film, about a young girl brought up by her elders to become a cocotte, a member of that French institution nicknamed Les Grandes Horizontales which over here are known more familiarly as high class tarts.

But at last my favourite Colette novel Cheri was not neglected, the story of the handsome son of Madame Peloux, another rich and now respectable hooker who is sent to learn the art of love from old friend and rival sex-goddess Lea. But tragically and unexpectedly Lea and Cheri become the great loves of each other’s lives, age and youth, alas, pulled apart by indifferent time. Nothing could be more French, more grown up, more unconventional, or more moving – Thomas Hardy she most certainly was not.

A wonderful evening showcasing one of the world’s great writers for a delighted audience. More please, Mr Edmonds, more.