Le Château: A Very French Affair
By Nick Hampton
When a well-to-do extended English family find their perfect escape from the pressures of the city, a 17th Century château awaiting renovation in a quiet corner of rural France, everything is très bon. They are welcomed into the commune, make new friends, and enjoy the peaceful, rustic lifestyle – until a powerful politician with a Machiavellian agenda sets out to ruin them. Against a backdrop of intrigue, blackmail, and skeletons of Nazi collaboration from World War II, the evils of corruption envelop their Gallic dream in Le Château: A Very French Affair. It’s both a cautionary tale and a spot-on study of what can happen when friendly, well-meaning outsiders – in this case a clan of Londoners – try to become insiders in a land with a very foreign culture. The author, Nick Hampton, a dual English-Australian national, wrote the novel from a position of great insight: his own home in the south of France.