One, Place de l'Eglise : a year or two in a French village /

Escape to Languedoc in this poignant and transportative true account of life in a beautifully restored house in the south of France'This love affair between an English family and a very old French house is by turns turbulent, lyrical and tragic . . . Enriched by an insatiable, ever-eager curiosity, he takes us down many a side alley, adding another dimension to the timeless story of what it is that makes France irresistible' MICHAEL PALIN________One day a Londoner and his wife went a little crazy and bought a crumbling house in deepest Languedoc. It was love at first sight.Over the years these Londoners gradually turn the house into a home. They navigate the language, floods and freezing winters. And eventually they find their place - their bar, their baker, their builder (ignore him at your peril).Slowly the family and the locals get to know one another and these busy English discover slower joys - the scent of thyme and lavender, the warmth of sun on stone walls, nights hung with stars, silence in the hills, the importance of history and memory, the liberation of laughter and the secrets of fig jam. One Place de l'Eglise is a love letter - to a house, a village, a country - from an outsider who discovers you can never be a stranger when you're made to feel so at home. Old houses never belong to people. People belong to them.'Wonderful. Exquisitely written, it is by turns laugh-out-loud funny then suddenly, unexpectedly and profoundly moving, wistful and touching: a homage to a place, to magical moments in time. An utter joy and a treat to read from the first to last pages' James Holland, author of Brothers in Arms