La Vie: A year in rural France

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For fans of Peter Mayle, La Vie is a perfect slice of sunny escapist joy from the Sunday Times bestselling John Lewis-Stempel. Lewis-Stempel’s best book in an age; my favourite, certainly, since Meadowland. I’m featuring it in a summer post because, like Peter Mayle’s Provence series, it’s ideal for armchair travelling. Especially with the heat waves that have swept Europe this summer, I’m much happier reading about France or Italy than being there. The author has written much about his Herefordshire haunts, but he’s now relocated permanently to southwest France (La Roche, in the Charente). He proudly calls himself a peasant farmer, growing what he can and bartering for much of the rest. La Vie chronicles a year in his quest to become self-sufficient. It opens one January and continues through the December, an occasional diary with recipes.

An utterly beguiling immersion in La France Profonde, keenly observed and beautifully told' Felicity Cloake, author of One More Croissant for the Road In this book, he describes a year on his farm, the birdsong, the wildlife, the crops, the villagers and some of the nuances of French culture, all in his beguiling, poetic style. The English countryside is 'a work of human art, done by the many and the nameless' and John Lewis-Stempel wanted to celebrate it. He has succeeded admirably.' - Daily MailSix Weeks: The Short and Gallant Life of the British Officer in the First World War: The Life and Death of the British Officer in the First World War (2011)

Many of our ancestors - the Angles, the Saxons, the Norse - came to the British Isles in longships made of oak. For centuries the oak touched every part of a Briton's life - from cradle to coffin It was oak that made the 'wooden walls' of Nelson's navy, and the navy that allowed Britain to rule the world. Even in the digital Apple age, the real oak has resonance - the word speaks of fortitude, antiquity, pastoralism.

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An utterly beguiling immersion in La France Profonde, keenly observed and beautifully told’ Felicity Cloake, author of One More Croissant for the Road I first heard of Lewis-Stempel through my subscription to The Times newspaper. He writes some of the nature watch pieces. It reminded me all over again of why I threw up everything for the magic of La Belle France' Carol Drinkwater From the Paleozoic volcanoes that stained its soil, to the Saxons who occupied it, to the Tudors who traded its wool, to the Land Girls of wartime, John Lewis-Stempel charts a sweeping, lyrical history of Woodston: the quintessential English farm.

The writing is as smooth as a glass of vintage wine...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. Daily Mail His column on nature and farming in Country Life won him Magazine Columnist of the Year in the 2016 BSME Awards. [3] His monthly column in The Countryman magazine began in March 2023. Lewis-Stempel is one of our finest nature writers ... He writes with delicate observation and authority, giving us in Woodston a book teeming with fascinating details, anecdotes and penetrating insights into the real cost of our denatured countryside.' - Sunday Times 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. This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately.

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. 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. 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. 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”.

John Lewis-Stempel's story of a year on his smallholding in the Charente is warm and vivid and beautiful. He plants his toes in the French earth and turns his lyrical gaze on the land, the people, the deep community spirit. Above all he does what he does best, he writes with virtuosity about the countryside and, in doing so, he writes about himself. Trevor Dolby, author of One Place de l’Eglise 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. Ever since I bought a house in rural France I have been attracted to this sort of guidepost book; my ignorance of France is not quite total, but there are innumerable blanks to fill. Sometimes a knowledgeable foreigner is best-placed to describe and explain the cultural differences in his adopted country. I feel enriched, bit by bit, by descriptions of food, custom, terroir, language and manners as interpreted by a sensitive and observant insider/outsider.If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us