A Tuscan Childhood - Tapa blanda

A loving and intimate portrait of Tuscany's many faces; but it is in her feeling for the landscape that Beevor excels. One can hear the buzzing of the cicadas, smell the wild thyme and feel the crunching of pine needles underfoot (SUNDAY TIMES)

A paean to an idyllic upbringing. Beevor's masterful prose evokes time and place, scent and taste, humour and superstition, the yearly rhythms of rural life ... A delightful read - and likely to inspire many an Italian holiday (THE LADY)

Kinta Beevor's distinctive contribution is in her detailed and unsentimental account of the peasant life of the time, its surrounding, its labours and its joys, and in her ability to convey the remembered happiness of a childhood spent in the freedom of two exceptionally beautiful houses amid some of the most delectable countryside in the world (Isabel Colegate TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT)

Its unpretentiousness and authenticity, and above all the sincreity of the writer's affection for an Italy now long lost, make it an attractive and engaging read (THE SPECTATOR)

A delightful corrective to the sickly Chiantishire school of writing. The descriptions of the harvesting and preparation of food and wine by the locals could not be bettered and the pages are alive with vivid characters, from stonemasons and farm workers to foreign bohemians ... a joy (OBSERVER)

A beautifully written book (SUNDAY TIMES)

A delightful memoir (MARIE CLAIRE)

Kinta Beevor was five years old when she fell in love with her parents' castle facing the carrara mountains. She and her brother ran barefoot, exploring an enchanted world.