La Vie: A year in rural France

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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! To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. 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.

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He is the only person to have won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing twice, with Meadowland and Where Poppies Blow. 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. He plants his toes in the French earth and turns his lyrical gaze on the land, the people, the deep community spirit . 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 .

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. 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). 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). 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.

There are so many things I enjoyed about this book which provided a glorious armchair excursion to rural life in France. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. 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).