When Pierre Loti - traveller, acrobat, naval officer, celebrated writer - died in 1923, he was given a state funeral, the only French writer to have received such as an honour besides Victor Hugo. This storyteller - bohemian, exotic and fiercely romantic - spent his life escaping the constraints of bourgeois France, and in doing so refined his age. He travelled the South Seas, Asia and the Middle East (his great obsession), and authored many novels and travel books. As adored as he was scorned by French society, Loti led the life that most romantics only dared write about.