AN INDIE BESTSELLER 'It reminded me all over again of why I threw up everything for the magic
of La Belle France ' Carol Drinkwater author of The Olive Farm 'An utterly beguiling
immersion in La France Profonde keenly observed and beautifully told' Felicity Cloake author
of One More Croissant for the Road For fans of Peter Mayle 'Britain's finest living nature
writer' takes the plunge and buys an old farmhouse deep in the French countryside - a perfect
slice of sunny escapist joy from the perennial Sunday Times bestseller. The Charente: roofs
of red terracotta tiles bleached-white walls windows shuttered against the blaring sun. 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. 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. He wanted to be self-sufficient to make his own
wine and learn the secrets of truffle farming. And so buying an old honey-coloured limestone
house with bright blue shutters the Lewis-Stempels began their new life as peasant farmers.
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. 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 .
