While we're on the subject of New Zealand.....

Please forgive the shout out, but while we're on the subject of New Zealand, here's a nice email I recently received from the books editor at the New Zealand Herald:

I am the books editor of the New Zealand Herald newspaper, and I have just read A Place in My Country for pleasure during my Christmas holidays.

I wanted to contact you to tell you how interesting and moving I found the book. It is so well-written and observed. I found it fascinating and full of gentle, non-judgemental insights into how the English rural landscape, which so many NZers relate to as that is where many of our ancestors came from, has changed.

There is a fairly constant diet of bucolic "move to thecountryside and find peace" programmes on TV here, made in the UK. Your book tells the real side of the story.

Please take this message as one of admiration and praise for your very finebook.

Authors need emails like that, they warm the heart. So thanks for that.

And this was a review from the Christchurch Press in New Zealand:

Who hasn't thought, occasionally, of chucking it all in and starting up a new life in the country?

After years in France climbing the corporate ladder, Ian Walthew finds himself back in his native England and, with a working life looming in London, does just that, although it must be said more by accident than by design..

On a whim, he and his wife buy a cottage in the Cotswolds – surely one of -England's prettiest regions.

Walthew is something of a burnt-out case when they arrive, and the story of this book is as much one of his own regeneration and coming to terms with his past, as it is an account of a life in the country.

As Walthew adapts to his new situation, it is his neighbour, Norman, a struggling, small-scale farmer (who barely acknowledges the new arrivals in the first few months) who gradually becomes the focal point of much of their day-to-day existence. Having lived what could be seen as a fairly typical modern life, flitting around the world for work and leisure, Walthew has his eyes opened to his own country by a man who has rarely left the area.

Through Norman – and his hard, battling, rustic life – Walthew develops a greater appreciation of what is there, and, just as importantly, what is being lost as the rural landscape – both social and physical – is irrevocably altered by 'progress'. It is a disappearing life – traditional farms pushed aside by bigger operations and developers catering to affluent lifestylers.

Walthew is not a hopeless romantic – he is well aware of the economic forces at work. But you can't help but feel that on many scores he's absolutely right, and while the country may be economically richer, it will be socially poorer as Norman and the likes are gradually squeezed from the land.

Well written and well constructed, this is an enjoyable, funny, often poignant book, and one that will resonate with many New Zealanders.

Christchurch Press

PLEASE HELP ME SUPPORT 'FARM BLOGS FROM AROUND THE WORLD' BY BUYING, READING AND REVIEWING MY BOOK
A Place in My Country: In Search of a Rural Dream

IT'S ABOUT URBAN DOWNSHIFTING TO THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE.

A BIG ASK I KNOW, BUT I NEED TO SHOW MY WIFE THAT THIS TIME CONSUMING FARM BLOG HOBBY ISN'T JUST FOR MY OWN AMUSEMENT AND INTEREST IN ALL THINGS FARMING (WHICH IT IS!)

Please support your local independent bookshop, but (yikes!).......

A Place in My Country: In Search of a Rural Dream (Amazon.com)
A Place in My Country: In Search of a Rural Dream (Amazon.co.uk)


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Ian Walthew

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