La Vie: A year in rural France

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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. 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. John Lewis-Stempel's story of a year on his smallholding in the Charente is warm and vivid and beautiful. To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal.

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). 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.

You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. 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 Charente: roofs of red terracotta tiles, bleached-white walls, windows shuttered against the blaring sun. For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned to live in a rural landscape as he did in childhood. Lewis-Stempel is a one-man advertisement for agricultural viability and ecological sensitivity, and an upholder of local uniqueness.The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. 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). Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. 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. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review.

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. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy.The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. He is the only person to have won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing twice, with Meadowland and Where Poppies Blow. He guides us with gusto around his tiny potager, his five-strong herd of Ouessant sheep with their coveted wool, his water lilies. 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).