La Vie: A year in rural France

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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. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. 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. This amount includes seller specified domestic postage charges as well as applicable international postage, dispatch, and other fees.

Over that first year, Lewis-Stempel fell in love with the French countryside, from the wild boar that trot past the kitchen window to the glow-worms and citronella candles that flicker in the evening garden. For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned to live in a rural landscape as he did in childhood.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. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. 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.

Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. He guides us with gusto around his tiny potager, his five-strong herd of Ouessant sheep with their coveted wool, his water lilies. There are so many things I enjoyed about this book which provided a glorious armchair excursion to rural life in France. 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!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. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy. To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. 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. 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.

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. Lewis-Stempel is a one-man advertisement for agricultural viability and ecological sensitivity, and an upholder of local uniqueness. 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 .He is the only person to have won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing twice, with Meadowland and Where Poppies Blow .

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. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. After calming the terrified animal, Lewis-Stempel leads him back to his field where the cause of the alarm is revealed: a fire salamander, basking in the sunshine. 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.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).