La Vie: A year in rural France

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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 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.

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. 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.A clear-eyed and unsentimental, yet utterly beguiling immersion in La France Profonde, keenly observed and beautifully told. 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. 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. 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 to live in a rural landscape as he did in childhood. 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.Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. There are so many things I enjoyed about this book which provided a glorious armchair excursion to rural life in France. 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. The Charente: roofs of red terracotta tiles, bleached-white walls, windows shuttered against the blaring sun. 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).

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

He plants his toes in the French earth and turns his lyrical gaze on the land, the people, the deep community spirit. He guides us with gusto around his tiny potager, his five-strong herd of Ouessant sheep with their coveted wool, his water lilies. Readers of his many books and his Times nature columns will know how easily Lewis-Stempel's writing marries the lyrical with the descriptive.