About the Book:

Visitors to France spend relaxing evenings in street-side restaurants enjoying the ambiance, food, and wine and dream of a getaway place in France, but it is usually just that, a dream, seldom acted upon.

While on such a visit to France, self-confessed Francophile, Alan Shattock took the plunge and bought an old belle maison française in the small Burgundy village of Charry-sur-Saône, near Dijon. This is an amusing, true, and quirky story of the amazing coincidences and events before and after the purchase, the practicalities and disasters, and of villagers who came to he rescue. It is an engaging memoir that shares with readers the author's experiences of buying and renovating a place in France and of becoming accepted into the community. It gives positive encouragement and justification to those who dare to ignore the cautions given on television about buying that "Place in France", and especially to those who dare to do so when armed with little French.

Alan recounts the extraordinary series of seemingly fatalistic coincidences that led to the eventual purchase of la belle maison, and, along the way enthuses about the influences of his parents during childhood visits to Burgundy in search of wine dealers. It is a wonderful account of village and family life at the table and at play and, above all, it is an illustration of the importance of the French lifestyle, the Gallic sense of friendship, camaraderie and neighbourliness - splendidly described in "Dreaming in Dijon."

About the Author:

Alan Shattock is an English-born medical scientist who has lived and worked in Ireland for over fifty years. Until now, his substantial writings have been published in scientific journals and motor-racing history. This is his first contribution to travel literature. He lives somewhere between Connemara in Ireland and France.