Avionics engineer and physicist Jean Colbert lives in Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Riviera with his wife, Madeleine. In 1969 they founded the renowned Institut de Français language school, where Colbert applied his scientific training to help students learn spoken French quickly

Where were you born?
In Paris, in the 19th arrondissement, near the Buttes Chaumont. It’s a beautiful park. It’s supposed to be the city park with the greatest variety of trees in France.

Do you have memories of your home there?
We lived in an apartment on the fourth floor – no elevator. It was a modest apartment. Memories are of Christmas, the toys, lectures when I gave my report card to be signed by my mother or father. I had my first cigarette in the Buttes Chaumont. I was about 12. To be fancy, cigarette brands had English names. High Life was a very famous cigarette; it was pronounced in French Eesh Leaf. I went to the café and asked for “un paquet d’Eesh Leaf, Madame, s’il vous plait.” She said: “Non, mon petit, you have to say Eech Life .”

Then you moved to America.
We lived in New York, Central Park West – just a plain apartment, a brownstone, nothing fancy. It was quite shabby, actually. Later I roamed around Europe as a field engineer for Bendix Aviation, based in Paris. I was always travelling; I lived in hotels. Back in the US I lived in Palo Alto [California] in a nice apartment with Chinese decoration and black enamel furniture. It was very original.

Where did you live when you returned to France?
I worked in a special Nato weapons programme, living in a top-floor studio apartment in Paris in St-Germain-des-Prés. It was way up on the seventh floor. I could see the Sacré Coeur, Montmartre, everything. It was very small, simple. That’s when I met my wife. I would invite her and we hardly had space to even sit next to each other.

MY FAVOURITE THINGS

A piano and classic poetry

A CD of Rachmaninoff playing all his major works. I have fun comparing the same pieces played by Rachmaninoff or played by Horowitz or Ashkenazy. It’s amazing the difference. You wouldn’t imagine how sober his playing was, without effect. It’s very interesting.

An anthology of the most published poems in all the anthologies of English poetry published anywhere by anybody. Number one is William Blake’s “Tiger, Tiger”. It’s a joy to read.

Citizen Kane is to my mind the greatest film ever made. It was a big shock when I first saw it – it revolutionised the cinema. Orson Welles was only 24; he’d never made a movie.

A picture taken by a photographer on the Promenade des Anglais. When I was small we went to Nice practically every winter for carnival. It was the fashion then to dress boys in sailor suits.

The piano is our son’s. He’s a composer of film music in Los Angeles. I helped him buy it. My aunt was a concert pianist. When I was small she’d dazzle me by playing Debussy, “Jardin sous la Pluie”, imitating the drops of water on garden leaves. Piano is part of my life.

Where did you live after your marriage?
First we went to Grenoble, where I tried to do a PhD in applied maths. We were freezing to death in a little chalet we had rented in the mountains. Then we moved to California, where I got a job at Nortronics, the avionics subsidiary of Ford at the time. We lived in Costa Mesa, near Newport Beach, in a regular house – nothing special. We didn’t have much money. As we drove around there were “For rent” signs everywhere. You couldn’t possibly think of renting a house in 1962 in France, you couldn’t find anywhere – in California we were in heaven. We chose a house for $90 a month. When we moved in the neighbour immediately said: “Hello, come on over”. We went over; I asked him how we got a telephone. In Paris at the time we had to wait five years to get a telephone. “Just call a private telephone company, Pacific Bell,” he said. So I called them up and nearly had a heart attack. The guy said: “You want us to come today or tomorrow?” Two of them came over in a big, olive green van. This was paradise.

How long did you live there?
We stayed for a couple of years then returned to France. We bought a house west of Paris at Chatou, which Madeleine worked on, as usual. She covered the pebbles with a lawn, planted delphiniums, dahlias. She had a soft spot for that house. It was near a big park with a castle and a lake. You opened the kitchen door and you were in the garden. Madeleine liked that house very much.

Where did you go when you returned to California?
Riverside, San Bernardino. We rented a house full of cockroaches. One day we had an earth tremor. My wife called up and said: “It’s shaking.” I said: “Get out, you and the children!” And the cockroaches came out too. We decided we wanted a house in a more human neighbourhood so we got one near the Mexican neighbourhood, which was separated from us by a railroad track. We had a swimming pool built, thinking it would add value to the house. When we returned to France and sold the house, we were told the property hadn’t increased in value because we were close to the Mexican neighbourhood.

When did you move to the south of France?
By 1967 Madeleine didn’t want to raise our children in California. But I’d worked in industry, in research, and after doing that in the US I couldn’t face it in France because it’s all so hard. It’s not easy to get anything done. In the US, government people try to help you; in France it’s the other way round. Madeleine had studied German in Germany for a year, Spanish in Spain because she wanted to be absolutely fluent in these languages. There didn’t seem to be a similar school in France for adults, with a pleasant atmosphere where people learn well. So we thought we’d give it a try. We lived in a penthouse apartment up the street [from the school] with a large terrace overlooking the bay [of Villefranche-sur-Mer]. We had a terrific view that was always changing but we finally got what I call metaphysical anguish from the sea. Sea all the time – we got tired of it. So we said: “No more. We have to find a house with greenery, away from the sea, away from the tourists.”

How did you find this house?
Madeleine found it. We haggled over the price for six months. It was in a terrible state. It was built in the 1970s – the simplest possible furniture and decoration; it was bare, no trees, except olive trees, no garden. We did it up gradually. There’s a mezzanine and down below a studio with bathroom and kitchen.

Is it your favourite home?
Yes, it definitely is our favourite. There’s no question.