He plants his toes in the French earth and turns his lyrical gaze on the land, the people, the deep community spirit. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. He is the only person to have won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing twice, with Meadowland and Where Poppies Blow. Alternately inspiring and exasperating, La Vie has all but forced me to build a potager and frustrated my dreams of evening strolls with a dog (due to lack of said canine) but is so beautifully, simply written, I missed it when I had to put it down ( to dig potager and commence papier mache dog). There are so many things I enjoyed about this book which provided a glorious armchair excursion to rural life in France.

Even if it doesn't make you want to move to France, you'll still wish you could open your window at night and hear that nightingale singing to you. He is the only person to have won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing twice, with Meadowland and Where Poppies Blow .Readers of his many books and his Times nature columns will know how easily Lewis-Stempel's writing marries the lyrical with the descriptive. John Lewis-Stempel's story of a year on his smallholding in the Charente is warm and vivid and beautiful. The descriptive writing of his walks in the area, the local wildlife, the local people and customs (and the attitudes of the French rural resident! Although it began as a practical enterprise, it quickly became an affair of the heart: of learning to bite the end off the morning baguette; taking two hours for lunch; in short, living the good life - or as the French say, La Vie. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy.

Highly descriptive, going round the year in the life of a newly arrived English peasant farmer's perspective who is hard working and accepted by his French neighbours because of who he is. John Lewis-Stempel's story of a year on his smallholding in the Charente is warm and vivid and beautiful . Good detail on the wildlife, farming and village life here in Charente but John's aim to live as a rural peasant is not supported by 100s of euros spent on exotic lillies, rare sheep and automatic oil pressing machines etc. What I have particularly enjoyed is re-learning French word and slang which I only remembered when reading the book, things I learned at school over 40 years ago came back to me (the fables by Jean De La Fontaine were learned by rote in "conversational French" back then. He guides us with gusto around his tiny potager, his five-strong herd of Ouessant sheep with their coveted wool, his water lilies.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The book is in effect a year's journal of John and his family moving to rural France, (an area I have visited as I have friends who live an hour away from this place). To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages.

He plants his toes in the French earth and turns his lyrical gaze on the land, the people, the deep community spirit . Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). In la France profonde the signs are more exotic, as John Lewis-Stempel discovers one February morning when his horse crashes through an electrified fence and bolts into a walnut orchard. The baker does his rounds in his battered little white van with a hundred warm baguettes in the back, while a cat picks its way past a Romanesque church, the sound of bells skipping across miles of rolling, glorious countryside.Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual. For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels. A clear-eyed and unsentimental, yet utterly beguiling immersion in La France Profonde, keenly observed and beautifully told.