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. An utterly beguiling immersion in La France Profonde, keenly observed and beautifully told' Felicity Cloake, author of One More Croissant for the Road

I watch Jean-Francois make his way from the Boulangerie to the Maisonette de la Presse. A journey of fifty yards, but it takes Jean-Francois quarter of an hour. A former notary in his early seventies, Jean-Francois shakes hands or bisous five different men and women - France is the republic of handshakes and kisses - and exchanges greetings, gossip and news with them all. These same people then greet and talk with others in a slow, slow quadrille.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 John Lewis-Stempel has permanently moved to France and become a self-sufficient farmer in the Charente region, living in extremely rural France or “la France Profonde”. Everyone who is British living in France profonde utters, as axiomatic, ‘France is like the Britain of our childhood’, by which they mean, depending on their certain age, the 1950s or the 1970s or 1990s. I first heard of Lewis-Stempel through my subscription to The Times newspaper. He writes some of the nature watch pieces.

The rituals of rural France, whether queuing for a baguette or sipping a noisette (espresso with a ‘nut’ of milk) while watching the world go by, are effective barriers to the rush of modern times. Somehow, in France, at least outside of Paris, Marseille and Lyon, there is still time. Time to be. Time to do nothing at all. His writing has an eternal feel. Even when writing about man, he writes about an ancient rhythm of life. This is not a book about the fast-paced modernity most of us live in. Lewis-Stempel described himself as perhaps the last religious nature writer. His faith, as well as a yearning for a way of life lost even in the depths of rural Herefordshire (England), are clear to see. Life and death are dealt with beautifully. Sometimes rural France is older still. While we were house-hunting and renting the mill in the hedged bocage of northern Deux-Sevres the birdsong was of medieval intensity. Here, in our corner of woods and arable fields in eastern Charente-Maritime, we are at Renaissance level. British nature writer John Lewis-Stempel is a man who takes birdsong seriously. In the Preface to this book, he highlights the song of nightingales as a reason to relocate to rural France. As a sort of Afterward, he compiles a list of all of the birds see on his own patch at La Roche in the Charente region. Throughout the novel, he notes which birds are singing; and just occasionally, those brief times in the annual calendar when there is seemingly no birdsong at all.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 Lewis-Stempel is a farmer of mediaeval heritage, with his family owning the same land for 700 years. But he has bought a house in the Charente region of France. This house comes with a potager, various farm buildings, and other accoutrements of a house built in rural France during the Belle Époque. The book recounts a year in his life: January-December.