Novelist Celia Brayfield had never lived more than a taxi ride from Soho, until one day she decided to take a year off. With the computer and the cats in the back of the car, and the blessing of her student daughter, she drove South until the dawn came up in the Bearn, the most romantic, remote and rustic region of France.

Deep France is the diary of a writer’s year in a tiny French village, trying to meet her deadlines when a good thunderstorm could blow out the computer and there were always artichokes to pick. It’s a walk in teh swashbuckling footsteps of The Three Musketeers and King Henri IV, full of funny and perceptive anecdotes about the year in which France had to face the euro, the World Cup and Le Pen’s presidential campaign.

‘An author who writes living, breathing novels capable of making us weep and marvel’ The Times

‘Her writing glitters: the humour is as sharp as a Sabatier knife’ Image