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A Small Place in Italy
The author's restoration of a run-down farmhouse in northern Tuscany provides the backdrop for an exploration of the rythms of country life and the quirks of human nature
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 3, 1994
29 people are currently reading
654 people want to read
About the author
Eric Newby
41 books171 followersGeorge Eric Newby CBE MC (December 6, 1919 – October 20, 2006) was an English author of travel literature.
Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequent financial crises and his own failure to pass algebra, Newby was taken away from school at sixteen and put to work as an office boy in the Dorland advertising agency on Regent Street, where he spent most of his time cycling around the office admiring the typists' legs. Fortunately, the agency lost the Kellogg's account and he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu in 1938, sailing in what Newby entitled The Last Grain Race (1956) from Europe to Australia and back by way of Cape Horn (his journey was also pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes). In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.
Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequent financial crises and his own failure to pass algebra, Newby was taken away from school at sixteen and put to work as an office boy in the Dorland advertising agency on Regent Street, where he spent most of his time cycling around the office admiring the typists' legs. Fortunately, the agency lost the Kellogg's account and he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu in 1938, sailing in what Newby entitled The Last Grain Race (1956) from Europe to Australia and back by way of Cape Horn (his journey was also pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes). In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
October 28, 2015
Interesting account of settling a second home in an area on the edge of Liguria/Tuscany, inland from the sea on the side of a mountain. This in the mid-1960's by the author and his wife. He was a POW and 2 to 3 year long fugitive in the area during the last years of the European theatre WWII. He's English. They keep the home for 20 years and restore some of the ruin during that period. It's good, with lots of physical detail and nuance of Italian rural life in that district, but it is written quite dry for my taste. As old as this tale is, it must be dated, but it truly does not seem so. Changing building method and material, access to craft men who know the uses of prior structures with skill of original purposes (like the ovens)in order to fix or re-purpose. Well, it is difficult nearly everywhere and in far easier locations then within Italy coupled with only vertical access for possible delivery. Beautiful, beautiful area is detailed. I was there, quite close to this in 1999 after visiting the Cinque Terre.
May 5, 2022
Eric Newby was an author whose books I truly enjoyed reading, so it’s no surprise his account of the home he purchased in Italy would eventually end up in my collection. It’s 1967 in Northern Tuscany when he and his wife first set sight upon the little house and they ended up living there into the 1990s. Naturally it’s a renovation project, not so much for trendy interiors, but just to get the home into a livable condition.
This is Italy and Tuscany before the wealthy and the avalanche of tourists arrived. As Newby notes, it’s a land where old-style work methods still endured. Manual labor rather than big machinery was the way the olives and the grapes were picked and processed, a truly pastoral lifestyle. There were characters galore. The seller of the house wouldn’t sell unless he could get real cash, rather than a cheque. The house also came with an elderly man who talked to himself and slept in a tiny alcove with a sagging roof. He would suddenly go off to other parts of the region to help with the local harvests and then suddenly return to create some innovative hardware solution for the Newbys. The neighbours were eccentric but always willing to help and the Newbys enjoyed the type of food that nowadays require expensive tour packages. When their decades of habitation there come to an end, the reader feels sad knowing the original cast of characters is long gone and an older way of life is going away.
I just love the way Newby wrote his books. How shall I describe it? It’s as though you’ve been casually walking along a quiet road, and you’re invited to sit down on a porch to listen to stories and watch the sun set. Invitational. Come on along and become part of the community. Warm, witty, self-deprecating. He writes in a bio-style but it’s a travelogue and he makes the reader appreciative of the land and of the fading people.
Book Season = Summer (the coming of the sun)
This is Italy and Tuscany before the wealthy and the avalanche of tourists arrived. As Newby notes, it’s a land where old-style work methods still endured. Manual labor rather than big machinery was the way the olives and the grapes were picked and processed, a truly pastoral lifestyle. There were characters galore. The seller of the house wouldn’t sell unless he could get real cash, rather than a cheque. The house also came with an elderly man who talked to himself and slept in a tiny alcove with a sagging roof. He would suddenly go off to other parts of the region to help with the local harvests and then suddenly return to create some innovative hardware solution for the Newbys. The neighbours were eccentric but always willing to help and the Newbys enjoyed the type of food that nowadays require expensive tour packages. When their decades of habitation there come to an end, the reader feels sad knowing the original cast of characters is long gone and an older way of life is going away.
I just love the way Newby wrote his books. How shall I describe it? It’s as though you’ve been casually walking along a quiet road, and you’re invited to sit down on a porch to listen to stories and watch the sun set. Invitational. Come on along and become part of the community. Warm, witty, self-deprecating. He writes in a bio-style but it’s a travelogue and he makes the reader appreciative of the land and of the fading people.
Book Season = Summer (the coming of the sun)
July 13, 2011
The book starts off pretty slowly-- the first 100 pages really are about buying and renovating the house. The story picks up in the second half, with more interesting stories about their neighbors. The book could have used more editing. There are some really convoluted sentences, and the structure could have been better.
April 28, 2017
The friend of mine who I borrow my Eric Newby books from said it best: 'The nice thing about Newby is there is no side to him.' This is a warm ramble through Eric and his wife Wanda's time in their ramshackle, Italian farm house. Odd as it may sound I feel like I know the Newbys at this point, and whether evading fascist death squads, being dragged around soviet wire factories or helping with the grape harvest they are always pleasant company.
August 7, 2011
It's been done too many times - let's buy an old house in Italy/France/Greece/Spain and see what happens! - but never as well as here. A refreshing contrast to Frances Mayes.
May 20, 2020
3.5 stars
A really lovely homage to the life that Eric Newby and his wife Wanda built for themselves in the Italian mountains! I read his memoir Love and War in the Apennines two years ago which was absolutely incredible. It's stayed in my mind all this time, so it was wonderful to read about these two, at peace and happy, in the decades the followed the war in which they met. The only reason it falls just short of four stars is the length of some of the 'less interesting' scenes, that had me skim reading. But I'm so glad I finally read it! Eric Newby is a fantastic, witty writer whose choice of words and depictions of the Italian characters often makes me laugh.
A really lovely homage to the life that Eric Newby and his wife Wanda built for themselves in the Italian mountains! I read his memoir Love and War in the Apennines two years ago which was absolutely incredible. It's stayed in my mind all this time, so it was wonderful to read about these two, at peace and happy, in the decades the followed the war in which they met. The only reason it falls just short of four stars is the length of some of the 'less interesting' scenes, that had me skim reading. But I'm so glad I finally read it! Eric Newby is a fantastic, witty writer whose choice of words and depictions of the Italian characters often makes me laugh.
May 4, 2012
Enthralling, very entertaining, the story of a lifestyle that has bit the dust. Eric and his wife bought a small place in Tuscany. Several times a year they come over from England to live there. Doing so, they immerse themselves in the community, helped by the fact that his wife speaks fluent Italian and he had been escaping from the Germans in that area in World War 2. The descriptions of the farmers and their lives reminds me of many stories I heard about relatives. Very amusing. You can tell he has a real love for the place.
September 13, 2016
What a terrific read this is! Generations before Frances Mayes and others set the world spinning with tales of Tuscany, Eric and his wonderful wife Wanda were digging ditches, harvesting grapes, throttling nests of cockroaches and living the hardcore peasant life in Tuscany. All the while he remembers being on the run during the war and being helped by many Italians. He leaves a lot left unsaid but what he says is gold.
May 9, 2022
Probably not quite a five star but certainly a solid 4.5⭐️
A re-read after almost 40 years, and a very enjoyable experience it was, like meeting an old friend after many years.
I’ve said it before that you can’t go far wrong with a good Eric Newby book, and this is no exception.
A re-read after almost 40 years, and a very enjoyable experience it was, like meeting an old friend after many years.
I’ve said it before that you can’t go far wrong with a good Eric Newby book, and this is no exception.
January 18, 2024
Having read Eric Newby’s ‘Love and War in the Apennines’ it was so good to return with him to this beautiful part of Italy as he and his wife return to the same area to buy and restore an old house. More interesting is how they become a part of the community, even though they are only there part of the year, helping with the real hard work (especially for men without hernias) of picking grapes on neighbours vineyards. Just a very sunny, ambient book, by a genial, knowledgeable and observant writer. The perfect antidote to a cold winter in England.
September 9, 2022
A bittersweet reminiscence of the Newby’s 25 years in which they owned a second home in the Tuscany region and of their relationship with their neighbors, many of whom became close friends. The stories of the grape harvesting and wine-making, together with the attendant feasts are the idyllic tales one thinks of as quintessentially Tuscan.
April 14, 2017
I read this book for the 2nd time and this time it made more sense to me since I have lived in Italy for 6 years already.
April 11, 2020
(FROM MY BLOG) Who wouldn't love to have a second home in Europe? Italy, or perhaps France? Back in 2017, I discussed Peter Mayle's book, A Year in Provence, about his adventures among his French neighbors. This past week, I read Eric Newby's 1994 memoir, A Small Place in Italy.
I actually chose Newby's book -- a British paperback edition obtained from a second-hand bookstore through Amazon -- simply because I wanted to read something else by Newby. In the past, I've discussed his more famous books, The Last Grain Race and A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, as well as (last month) his collection of essays, A Traveller's Life.
While not the best of Newby's writing, A Small Place in Italy -- as it turned out -- had a special interest for me. The house he and his wife ended up buying in the mid 1960s (named "I Castagni") was near Sarzana, in the hills about five miles behind Lerici on the Ligurian coast. Lerici is just five miles south of La Spezia, and La Spezia is the southern entrance to the Cinque Terre. As some will recall, before the pandemic, I had planned a birthday celebration next month with 30 guests for Levanto, at the north end of the Cinque Terre. Lerici is also where the English poet Shelley drowned, although that's not relevant to Newby's story.
Reading the book was the next best thing to actually visiting the area, although as the book makes clear, the area changed radically between 1967 and 1991, when the Newbys sold their house and moved away.
Readers of A Traveller's Life will recall that Newby temporarily escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Italy during World War II, and wandered about the Apuan Alps, holing up in a cave during one winter with assistance from local sympathizers. The nearness to that area -- between Lerici and Parma -- was one factor in his decision to purchase property where he did. He hoped to -- and did -- look up people who had become good friends and allies during the war.
For those of us who are physically lazy, the book is somewhat exhausting to read. As with Mayle's story of Provence, and other books by English writers describing life in southern Europe, the Newbys made close friends, friends of peasant stock who were largely friendly, good-humored, and close to the land. But the book describes in detail -- for me, excessive detail -- the hard physical labor required to restore the house from virtual ruin to an inhabitable residence, and their work harvesting grapes and olives on their own property and, reciprocally, for their neighbors. All accomplished, year after year, during time he managed to take away from his job in London as the travel editor for a London newspaper.
You may learn more about grapes and olives -- not to mention mushrooms -- than you hoped to know.
As you would guess, from reading Newby's better-known works, he and his ethnically Slovenian but Italian-reared wife Wanda, are a hard working but easy-going couple. They make friends easily. Wanda is fluent in Italian, and Eric is close to fluent. (Although their neighbors generally spoke a local dialect among themselves, which is largely unintelligible to Italian speakers.) They knew both how to offer hospitality to their neighbors, and how to accept hospitality freely. They accept without hesitation all the peculiarities they encounter among their peasant neighbors, and are able to relate to them on their own terms. They came to Italy to learn to be Italian farmers, not to bring the joys of British civilization to the Italians.
A lesson we can all carefully note.
They managed to get along well with everyone, aside from a malicious and unpopular neighbor named Arturo, who tied them up in litigation for years in an attempt to wrest from them an easement over their property. There's one in every crowd, as they say.
The last three chapters are a heartrending story of the deaths of one friend after another. Young children became middle-aged adults, with less interest in tending vines or olive trees. The help their neighbors had so willingly provided with the crops, and the hospitality and huge meals they had provided, became less available. Even this backwoods, mountainous part of Italy was becoming part of a standardized, modern world. All of a sudden, television was everywhere.
The words Newby provides describing a town on the Parma side of the mountains -- a town that was grim and somewhat closed in on itself, and full of old people dressed in black, when first visited -- serve as a requiem for the peasant life throughout the Apuan Alps -- and all of rural Europe, perhaps.
Eric and Wanda, no longer able to tend their vines and trees, sold their house and returned to England.
I actually chose Newby's book -- a British paperback edition obtained from a second-hand bookstore through Amazon -- simply because I wanted to read something else by Newby. In the past, I've discussed his more famous books, The Last Grain Race and A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, as well as (last month) his collection of essays, A Traveller's Life.
While not the best of Newby's writing, A Small Place in Italy -- as it turned out -- had a special interest for me. The house he and his wife ended up buying in the mid 1960s (named "I Castagni") was near Sarzana, in the hills about five miles behind Lerici on the Ligurian coast. Lerici is just five miles south of La Spezia, and La Spezia is the southern entrance to the Cinque Terre. As some will recall, before the pandemic, I had planned a birthday celebration next month with 30 guests for Levanto, at the north end of the Cinque Terre. Lerici is also where the English poet Shelley drowned, although that's not relevant to Newby's story.
Reading the book was the next best thing to actually visiting the area, although as the book makes clear, the area changed radically between 1967 and 1991, when the Newbys sold their house and moved away.
Readers of A Traveller's Life will recall that Newby temporarily escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Italy during World War II, and wandered about the Apuan Alps, holing up in a cave during one winter with assistance from local sympathizers. The nearness to that area -- between Lerici and Parma -- was one factor in his decision to purchase property where he did. He hoped to -- and did -- look up people who had become good friends and allies during the war.
For those of us who are physically lazy, the book is somewhat exhausting to read. As with Mayle's story of Provence, and other books by English writers describing life in southern Europe, the Newbys made close friends, friends of peasant stock who were largely friendly, good-humored, and close to the land. But the book describes in detail -- for me, excessive detail -- the hard physical labor required to restore the house from virtual ruin to an inhabitable residence, and their work harvesting grapes and olives on their own property and, reciprocally, for their neighbors. All accomplished, year after year, during time he managed to take away from his job in London as the travel editor for a London newspaper.
You may learn more about grapes and olives -- not to mention mushrooms -- than you hoped to know.
As you would guess, from reading Newby's better-known works, he and his ethnically Slovenian but Italian-reared wife Wanda, are a hard working but easy-going couple. They make friends easily. Wanda is fluent in Italian, and Eric is close to fluent. (Although their neighbors generally spoke a local dialect among themselves, which is largely unintelligible to Italian speakers.) They knew both how to offer hospitality to their neighbors, and how to accept hospitality freely. They accept without hesitation all the peculiarities they encounter among their peasant neighbors, and are able to relate to them on their own terms. They came to Italy to learn to be Italian farmers, not to bring the joys of British civilization to the Italians.
A lesson we can all carefully note.
They managed to get along well with everyone, aside from a malicious and unpopular neighbor named Arturo, who tied them up in litigation for years in an attempt to wrest from them an easement over their property. There's one in every crowd, as they say.
The last three chapters are a heartrending story of the deaths of one friend after another. Young children became middle-aged adults, with less interest in tending vines or olive trees. The help their neighbors had so willingly provided with the crops, and the hospitality and huge meals they had provided, became less available. Even this backwoods, mountainous part of Italy was becoming part of a standardized, modern world. All of a sudden, television was everywhere.
The words Newby provides describing a town on the Parma side of the mountains -- a town that was grim and somewhat closed in on itself, and full of old people dressed in black, when first visited -- serve as a requiem for the peasant life throughout the Apuan Alps -- and all of rural Europe, perhaps.
The year before we left I Castagni, Sassalbo had changed not beyond recognition but sufficiently to make one rub one's eyes. It was not only the village that had changed, the inhabitants also had undergone a degree of metamorphosis. ... But there were still shepherds who had big flocks of sheep; and the shepherds still sold the cheese, but nobody sold the wool any more; and no one spun it; and very few people wore black; and the place was full of teenagers, mostly students.In one way, the people were "more allegro," happier. But something real and authentic had been lost.
Eric and Wanda, no longer able to tend their vines and trees, sold their house and returned to England.
January 8, 2013
A funny yet sad memoir set in Italy. WW11 veteran returning with his wife two purchase a home. While navigating local customs they create a rich life with good friends.
May 29, 2020
Travel writer Eric Newby and his wife Wanda buy and renovate a rundown house in Italy, called I Castagni (The Chestnuts), which becomes their beloved holiday home for 25 years. This book is a memoir of those years, told with warmth and affection.
Having previously read and enjoyed Love and War in the Apennines about Newby's time as an escaping POW in WWII Italy, I was keen to read this account of his return to the country in the 1960s. I enjoyed the opening chapters where he writes about their search for a house and we get to know his neighbours in the village. Eric and Wanda (a Slovenian who grew up in Italy and met Eric when he was a POW) threw themselves into life there, making friends, renovating their house and setting up a vineyard and olive groves.
Surprisingly for a travel writer, Newby has a rather prosaic writing style and fills his account with facts and figures, especially figures. On a walk across the Apennines, he lists the mountains he climbs, with heights in metres. On visiting a chapel, he lists dates and the different features of the building. Those who would prefer some personal response to his experiences, or even more imagery in the descriptions, will often be disappointed. It's a shame, because when he turns to anecdotes about his friends (and one memorable foe) at I Castagni, the book comes to life and his genuine affection for the place shines through.
This is a likeable account of Italian rural life and an easy read. I give it 3.5 stars, the best parts were worth 4 stars but overall it didn't quite deserve that rating.
Having previously read and enjoyed Love and War in the Apennines about Newby's time as an escaping POW in WWII Italy, I was keen to read this account of his return to the country in the 1960s. I enjoyed the opening chapters where he writes about their search for a house and we get to know his neighbours in the village. Eric and Wanda (a Slovenian who grew up in Italy and met Eric when he was a POW) threw themselves into life there, making friends, renovating their house and setting up a vineyard and olive groves.
Surprisingly for a travel writer, Newby has a rather prosaic writing style and fills his account with facts and figures, especially figures. On a walk across the Apennines, he lists the mountains he climbs, with heights in metres. On visiting a chapel, he lists dates and the different features of the building. Those who would prefer some personal response to his experiences, or even more imagery in the descriptions, will often be disappointed. It's a shame, because when he turns to anecdotes about his friends (and one memorable foe) at I Castagni, the book comes to life and his genuine affection for the place shines through.
This is a likeable account of Italian rural life and an easy read. I give it 3.5 stars, the best parts were worth 4 stars but overall it didn't quite deserve that rating.
July 8, 2021
It is fitting that I should become acquainted with Devon travel writer, Eric Newby, while I was traveling in Devon, browsing the the bookstall at the Tavistock Pannier Market. There I purchased his “Love and War in the Apennines”, his account of being an escaped POW in Mussolini’s Italy who was sheltered by many Italians. Twenty-five years after the war, he and his wife Wanda purchased a dilapidated farm house near those who risked their lives to save him, providing the basis for “A Small Place in Italy”. While not as dramatic as “Love and War”, this book is a touching memoir about what is now a lost way of life, and I couldn’t help but feel wistful thinking that while the modern era has given us so much ease and entertainment, it has taken so much from us: connection, communication, camaraderie with others and the land. Newby’s wry and gentle humor and astute abilities for observation make him a sympathetic guide to the past. As he and Wanda are literally “Newbys” to the area, they must prove themselves to their neighbors and learn the Italian way of life, from building a home, joining harvests, making wine, and participating in all of the festivities. Although it is episodic, it is a nice escape to the past to see how life once was, and it reminded me a bit of Laurie Lee’s “As I Walked Out One Summer Morning” about pre-Franco Spain and Julia Child’s “My Life in France”.
Highly recommend if you are looking for classic travel literature.
Highly recommend if you are looking for classic travel literature.
June 10, 2018
I read this book in the garden thinking of my Italian holiday in a months time, so in this context, my review is a bit rose tinted, nevertheless, this book is a great read, giving you the sense of late 1960’s Italy before the mass tourism that hit Liguria and Tuscany, an insight into the local people who had lived off the land for generations, and had only a 20 years beforehand survived tumultuous war and invasion. It’s everyone’s pipe dream to own a house somewhere sunny and Newby doesn’t pull any punches, it’s hard work: he befriends local tradesmen and neighbours and brings the characters to life, as he always does. I’d say this isn’t his best book, but it does suddenly become very emotional at the end, as characters die off, And it did make me a little tearful at the end as it is apparent it’s and end of an era for Eric and Wanda and for the people in their story. I would recommend this book as a lovely summer read for anyone who fantasises of owning a property abroad.
July 23, 2025
I truly loved this book. Given to me as a gift, which makes it even more special. I loved the simple no frills writing, though thought the chapters ended a bit abruptly at times.
My favourite passages were the description of participating in the vendemia, the poem written by Signore Guesseppe (if I remembered right) and the story about Signora Angiolina. I loved the people, the landscape, the food, the walls, and feeling like I was being told this by the kind, compassionate, and erudite person E.N. seems to be. It made me happy as I felt in a dream world of idealism and the happiness of simple pleasures of beauty, nature, sun, food, olive oil, and good wine, though of course that’s not always the case. E.N. is how I imagine the embodiment of all that is good about British identity. He talks about his time in the war and horrors of the war so plainly and too the point, which I find incredible.
My favourite passages were the description of participating in the vendemia, the poem written by Signore Guesseppe (if I remembered right) and the story about Signora Angiolina. I loved the people, the landscape, the food, the walls, and feeling like I was being told this by the kind, compassionate, and erudite person E.N. seems to be. It made me happy as I felt in a dream world of idealism and the happiness of simple pleasures of beauty, nature, sun, food, olive oil, and good wine, though of course that’s not always the case. E.N. is how I imagine the embodiment of all that is good about British identity. He talks about his time in the war and horrors of the war so plainly and too the point, which I find incredible.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 10, 2023
Mr Newby paints a delightful picture of rural, indeed peasant Italy in the 60s and 70s, when he buys a tumbledown cottage called I Castigni in the heart of the Apennines, where he was interned in WWII and where he met his future wife Wanda. This humorous narrative is full of vivid descriptions of the wonderful people he meets, farmers, smallholders, shop assistants, cafe proprietors, priests, neighbours, all portrayed in a sympathetic and loving manner. He also describes the wine-making process, which is a delight to read. The last chapter sees a change in tone, as his friends and neighbours start dying, and the region alters dramatically with the advent of television and the internet. The old ways die and Mr Newby no longer feels he wants to be part of them, so he and his wife sell up in the early 1990s and leave I Castigni for ever. A joyous and great read.
December 28, 2018
The author describes buying, rehabbing, and living in a house in the Italian countryside. Making this easier for him is that he is a well-off Englishman who has married an Italian woman. Given the intricacies described of dealing with Italian workmen and becoming a resident, his money and Italian connection through his wife made things easier. But this is a kind of fish-out-of-water story that goes on a long time, as the author becomes part of the neighborhood. I enjoyed the quirky stories of a time gone by. The author’s most interesting observation was about some policemen he was travelling with could easily have killed him a few years earlier, when he was an Allied soldier and they were in the local militia. Things change, often for the better.
May 5, 2020
This book appealed to me just like nearly everything about Italy appeals to me, but the writing wasn't as polished as I thought it would be for a professional travel writer. Nevertheless it was a joy to read about Eric and Wanda's adventures. I found myself referring to a map (looking for Fosdinovo) because although I've been to La Spezia and Cinque Terre, I am unfamiliar with the area inland, where their abode I Castagni is located.
Newby's detailed description of the sheer strength and labor-force necessary for the vendemmia gave me new appreciation for both rarity and price of Tuscan wines. Goodness, what an undertaking! Even if modern machinery has since replaced human exertion, the annual grape harvest likely remains a time consuming and expensive undertaking.
Newby's detailed description of the sheer strength and labor-force necessary for the vendemmia gave me new appreciation for both rarity and price of Tuscan wines. Goodness, what an undertaking! Even if modern machinery has since replaced human exertion, the annual grape harvest likely remains a time consuming and expensive undertaking.
February 17, 2019
The author spent time in Italy during the Second World War. A number of years later, he and his wife had an opportunity to purchase a place in Tuscany which they worked to restore and make livable during their twice a year trips. But this isn’t just about the renovation efforts, it’s also about the people they met who made them part of their lives involving them in the events of the region. Published by Lonely Planet, this is a glimpse into a region and it’s customs at that time. My main drawback is the frequent use of Italian words and phrases with no translation provided.
May 10, 2017
Eric Newby, and his wife, Wanda acquire a small and ruined farmhouse in the foothills of the Alps. This book is about how they set about restoring that house, and their life in this rural area of Italy. Newby met Wanda when he was a POW on the run during WW2, a story recounted in 'Love and War In The Appenines'. This book reads as a much more 'authentic' experience than the current penomenally successful 'Under The Tuscan Sun', which it pre-dates by a couple of years.
August 26, 2017
This was a fascinating story about the experiences of Travel Writer Eric Newby and his Italian wife Wanda in buying and renovating a small place in a grape and olive growing area of Tuscany Italy as a holiday home. Their experiences of integrating into the local community make for interesting reading and give an excellent insight into a world so different to what I know. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
September 17, 2020
About another time in Italy - Eric Newby and his wife decided to buy an old house in Italy in the 1960s with all the related trials and tribulations. He explained the situation of establishing a second household there and set the scene well. As he and his wife decided to move on in 1991, Italy was doing the same. Still worth reading, for nostalgic value as well as descriptions of nearby famous smaller cities (Lucca, for example) and countryside.
October 25, 2020
This is a special book for people who know Carrara, Lucca, Aulla and other Italian locations in the region. If you are a foreigner luvinb there even part time, this book is for you. Many details can make you laugh or make you sad, if you met these details yourself. All in all, I had a great time reading it and telling my friends about it. A joyful reading for anyone not just in love with Italy, but being a foreigner and accepting the country in its full.
October 23, 2021
There are much better books of this genre. I had read Love and War in the Apennines by this same author and had picked up this book in the hope of something better, but he is at least consistent — bloated, sometimes pointless, sentences, paragraphs and sections that desperately cried out for an editor. Long sentences with a paucity of punctuation despite clauses within clauses. Very difficult to read as a result.
If you want to read about living in Italy, look elsewhere.
If you want to read about living in Italy, look elsewhere.
August 2, 2025
Another step in my read everything written by Eric Newby project. This one also falls far short of his best work but it is still entertainingly Newby. The story of the acquisition, refurbishment & life at an Italian country house in Tuscany. Good descriptions of the seasons & accompanying life events involving neighbors, weather, crops & traditions. Some humor, much local color. Newby's love of rural Italy is conveyed.
February 25, 2019
I'm glad I found this book just before a trip to Tuscany. In short it's a memoir of a British man and his Italian wife's small home in Italy where they took part in local life for 25 years. How they met and Newby's WWII experience that formed the backbone of this book was the most interesting part!
August 10, 2024
Very dated. Travel writer Eric Newby & his wife acquire a dilapidated & long abandoned house in the foothills of northern Tuscany in 1967.
What ensues are the trials, tribulations, friendships, hard work, dining & drinking with new neighbours in rural Italy. Many of the tales are witty & some of the characters quite delightful.
I preserved ,despite many historic references, as charm for Italian life in a by gone era was the draw card.
What ensues are the trials, tribulations, friendships, hard work, dining & drinking with new neighbours in rural Italy. Many of the tales are witty & some of the characters quite delightful.
I preserved ,despite many historic references, as charm for Italian life in a by gone era was the draw card.
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