La Vie: A year in rural France

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Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy. He plants his toes in the French earth and turns his lyrical gaze on the land, the people, the deep community spirit . 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. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time.

Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. 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. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. 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! There are so many things I enjoyed about this book which provided a glorious armchair excursion to rural life in France. 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 .

Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review.

Readers of his many books and his Times nature columns will know how easily Lewis-Stempel's writing marries the lyrical with the descriptive. 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. John Lewis-Stempel's story of a year on his smallholding in the Charente is warm and vivid and beautiful . 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.

To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page.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). Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. A clear-eyed and unsentimental, yet utterly beguiling immersion in La France Profonde, keenly observed and beautifully told. 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).

For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned to live in a rural landscape as he did in childhood. 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. He guides us with gusto around his tiny potager, his five-strong herd of Ouessant sheep with their coveted wool, his water lilies. 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.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. 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. 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.