Tuscan Living by Sarah Fraser

Review by Mike Hunter

Tuscan Living by Sarah Fraser may appear to be only another book beginning, “So we fell in love with the ruined farmhouse...” Well, Richard and Sarah did fall in love with their house, but this book is different. Perhaps I am unduly influenced by the fact that I, like them, was born in Yorkshire, and now have a farmhouse in the hills above Pescia.

Richard and Sarah Turnbull gave up their semi-detached house and disco business in Yorkshire to make a new life in the hills above Pescia in Northern Tuscany. They bought a farmhouse in some degree of disrepair, hoping to make a living from its 15 acres. They may appear to have been brave, foolish or seriously misinformed. Our friends with such farms are either retired with pensions, or younger couples with one in full-time employment. Could Richard and Sarah succeed?

Their story has been told in the UK Channel 4 series, No Going Back (featuring several families planning new lives in the sun, mostly disastrously) and A Year in Tuscany (5 programmes broadcast in August-September 2003). The book is certainly a spin-off from these TV programmes, but don’t think that if you saw the programmes, you needn’t buy the book.

The book isn’t a month by month story of their first year in Tuscany, in the style of Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence.

It does start with an account of their life in

Yorkshire, of how they decided to start a new life in Tuscany and of how they fell in love with this particular house, the Casa del Sole. The subsequent chapters, covering, for example, Renovating in Italy, Managing the Land, The Olives, Holiday Guests, Finances and Bureaucracy, Starting School and Health Care, each describe both their personal experiences in these areas and a checklist of how to do it.

The book is published by Cassell Illustrated, in book size but magazine format – text in columns and attractive typefaces, with photographs on nearly every page.

A few niggles: your essential surveyor, getting your planning permissions and dealing with builders, is not spelled ‘geometre’ – it is geometra; is Pescia really between Pisa and Lucca? – no wonder your guests were lost; not all Italian men cook, nor are all Italian women slim; and you can’t cook a ragù in one hour – it takes at least three!

Will Richard and Sarah succeed? Probably not from their 15 acres alone. They may have been impulsive and slightly ill informed. But the book tells of their careful planning, determination and sheer hard work. And Sarah’s writing abilities are probably their best bet. If you buy this book, it will help. You won’t regret it. It is a delightful book. 

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