La Vie: A year in rural France

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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. 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. 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. Lewis-Stempel is a one-man advertisement for agricultural viability and ecological sensitivity, and an upholder of local uniqueness. Readers of his many books and his Times nature columns will know how easily Lewis-Stempel's writing marries the lyrical with the descriptive.

He plants his toes in the French earth and turns his lyrical gaze on the land, the people, the deep community spirit. To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. But as three species of lizard emerged from hibernation to join the party, he realises that’s how you know winter has passed in Charente-Maritime. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages.For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned once again to live in a landscape where turtle doves purr and nightingales sing, as they did almost everywhere in his childhood. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

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.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The Charente: roofs of red terracotta tiles, bleached-white walls, windows shuttered against the blaring sun. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy. John Lewis-Stempel's story of a year on his smallholding in the Charente is warm and vivid and beautiful. He plants his toes in the French earth and turns his lyrical gaze on the land, the people, the deep community spirit .