She steered the Jaguar towards the gatehouse, where the guards had already lost interest in their screens, intrigued by this confident young woman at the controls of her antique car. The middle classes have run the world since the French Revolution, but they're now the new proletariat. It's time for another elite to set the agenda." The newly arrived Paul and Jane live in a large art-deco villa in which David Greenwood formerly resided:

It's irritating to be reminded of the contingent world", remarks Penrose as he outlines his plans for the "intelligent city" he is creating. At first sight, that intelligence takes the form of advanced health screening, up-to-the-minute gadgetry and the replacement of the civic by the commercial. But as the novel progresses, his vision is seen to be far more concerned with the accommodation and encouragement of baser instincts. "A controlled psychopathy is a way of resocialising people and tribalising them into mutually supportive groups," he explains in defence of the violent "special actions" carried out by the bowling club. "The consumer society hungers for the deviant and unexpected - psychopathy is the only engine powerful enough to light our imaginations, to drive the arts, sciences and industries of the world." The narrator is unlikable, partly because he's gross and married someone way younger (not a deal-breaker in itself, but that coupled with his dismissive disdain for women in general makes him one of "those guys") and partly because he gets off on the violence he sees or has described to him. He's supposed to be the detective figuring out the secrets, but he's entirely too sympathetic to the villains' point of view. There's no tension there. The set-up there makes him act in inexplicable ways. Cronenberg added: “ Super-Canneswas an incredibly prescient novel that is more relevant now than ever — a heady blend of cutting politics and deviant psychology, built around a deeply satisfying detective story. I’m thrilled to get the opportunity to adapt it, and to be working on the series with Anti-Worlds and Ringside.” Rather than overheat either Jane's imagination or the Jaguar's elderly engine, I decided to avoid the Autoroute du Soleil and take the RN7. We bypassed Paris on the Périphérique, and spent our first evening at a venerable hotel in the forest near Fontainebleau, spelling out the attractions of Eden-Olympia to each other and trying not to notice the antique hunting rifle on the dining-room mantelpiece.Once you’ve settled on Cannes as your French Riviera base, the next step is to find your dream villa. But with so much on offer, finding just the right house might be more difficult than you think. To help you make that all-important decision, here are a few factors to consider while you’re property-hunting in the city: The group violence allows Penrose to experience violence vicariously, so there is a sense in which his approach is designed for his own benefit. Gravel tore at the Jaguar’s tyres. Waking from her reverie, Jane braked sharply before we reached the gatehouse, sending the old sports saloon into a giddy shunt. Two uniformed guards looked up from their electronic screens, but Jane ignored them, readying a two-finger salute that I managed to conceal. I began to count the pools, each a flare of turquoise light lost behind the high walls of the villas with their screens of cycads and bougainvillaea. Ten thousand years in the future, long after the Côte d’Azur had been abandoned, the first explorers would puzzle over these empty pits, with their eroded frescoes of tritons and stylized fish, inexplicably hauled up the mountainsides like aquatic sundials or the altars of a bizarre religion devised by a race of visionary geometers.

These impulses exist in all of us. They're the combustible fuel the psyche runs on...We're talking about thoughts not deeds. We don't give in to every passing whim or impulse. But it's a mistake to ignore them...If you feel drawn from thought to deed, seize the hour. Pay the price. Be true to your real self, embrace all the possibilities of your life." Neal said: “We’re delighted to be involved with Brandon and Andy in adapting such an iconic piece of work. The source material is so rich and the characters so vivid that we are confident it will be an appealing project for both talent and buyers.”

A beautiful Belle Epoque villa in Cannes, available for private events

While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Described as "The best British novel about the Second World War" by The Guardian, the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg. Externally the property is surrounded by spacious landscaped grounds of approximately 2,020 sq m complete with open terraces and a swimming pool. Jane pointed to the hillside, raising a finger still grimy from changing a spark plug. Hundreds of blue ovals trembled like damaged retinas in the Provencal sun.