La Vie: A year in rural France

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He guides us with gusto around his tiny potager, his five-strong herd of Ouessant sheep with their coveted wool, his water lilies. 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).

To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. 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.Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. Lewis-Stempel is a one-man advertisement for agricultural viability and ecological sensitivity, and an upholder of local uniqueness. 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). You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. 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 plants his toes in the French earth and turns his lyrical gaze on the land, the people, the deep community spirit. John Lewis-Stempel sets off from the UK to the rural far west of France - la France profonde - where he and his wife settle to a farming life in a draughty house with a small menagerie of pets and farm animals and a few acres of vineyards. 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. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned to live in a rural landscape as he did in childhood. 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. 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.

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 . 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.

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). John Lewis-Stempel's story of a year on his smallholding in the Charente is warm and vivid and beautiful. He is the only person to have won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing twice, with Meadowland and Where Poppies Blow. 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.

The Charente: roofs of red terracotta tiles, bleached-white walls, windows shuttered against the blaring sun. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly.Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy. 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. 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.