In 1967 Eric Newby and his wife Wanda fulfilled a long-cherished ambition when they acquired I Castagni, a small excessively ruined farmhouse in the foothills of the Apuan Alps on the borders of Liguria and northern Tuscany. The house came with a tileless roof, a long-abandoned septic tank and a wealth of indigenous wildlife. This book is a brilliant memoir of a house and a magnificent re-creation of a forgotten time and era.
