La Vie

For many years a farmer in Engeland, John Lewis-Stempel yearned to live once again in a landscape where turtle doves purr and nightingales sing, as they did almost everywhere during his childhood. He also wanted to grow lavender, make his own wine, learn the secrets of truffle farming, raise Toulouse geese... And so he and his wife bought an old honey-coloured curate's house and its land in the French countryside. Although their move began as a practical enterprise, it became an affair of the heart: of learning to bite the end off the morning baguette; taking two hours for lunch; sipping Pineau by the flickering light of citronella candles in the evening garden. In short, living the good life - or, as the French say, La Vie.