The Opening Country: A Walk Through France

In this journey of discovery, John Micklewright travels the slow way, on foot, on paths, tracks and byways from the Channel to the Alps - from the coast of Normandy to the flanks of Mont Blanc.

The Opening Country is a beautifully written account of his progress through the French countryside, an evocative patchwork of landscape, nature, history, literature, film, and - drawing on his father's diaries that stretch back to the 1930s - of memoir.

Always curious, absorbing all around him, ready on a whim to divert from his chosen route as he heads unhurriedly southwards. The natural world unfolds as spring turns to summer with surprises of bird song and butterflies, against a constant background of reminders of the economic and social story of rural France and of wars past. The result is an engrossing record of a classic long-distance walk through Britain's nearest continental neighbour.

The Opening Country is a book to fire the imagination - a call to travel slowly, to open eyes and ears, to discover and explore.

John Micklewright is an academic economist, latterly professor at University College London, working on poverty and inequality with a number of books on these subjects. He lived and worked for years in Italy including a spell with the UN. When not walking in France, he lives in Winchester.