One Place de l’Eglise : A Year in Provence for the 21st century

Irresistible, a timeless story.'
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.

With the coming of the first decade of the twenty-first century, 1 Place de l'Eglise had become rather derelict. The roof leaked, the mortar in the ancient walls was crumbling. There was no electricity to speak of. And there it stood. Shutters and doors firmly locked, the villagers of Causses-et-Veyran passing by to the church next door.

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.

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