Hello readers, I’m Laurette Long, author of The French Summer Novels and I’m writing this sitting in a garden full of rosemary and lavender, admiring the sun slipping behind the hilltop village across the valley and waiting for the nightingale to tune up. Before it gets dark I might stroll down the field to pick a handful of figs–making sure to stamp loudly to warn any sleeping snakes. Where am I? Sometimes I have to pinch myself. They say Life’s a journey. How did that journey take me from a council house in west Yorkshire to a hamlet in south-west France?

I blame it on the parents. At the tender age of thirteen, I was pushed out of the nest one summer and sent to foreign climes. France. Mum and Dad, firm believers that travel broadens the mind, scraped up enough money to send me on a school exchange programme…