[Karen Wheeler memoir 02] • Toute Allure

There is so much to look forward to in the months ahead – to

lengthening evenings, bike rides past fields of sunflowers or wild meadows of bluebells and poppies (just like the seventies Flake ad) and several months of fetes, vide greniers (car boot sales) and barbecues in friends’ gardens. And I cannot wait to get back to see if Andy Lawton has called…

After reaching the heights as a successful fashion editor, Karen

said goodbye to all that and set about renovating a run-down

house in rural Poitou-Charentes, in central western France,

and living a simpler life. Her idyll is almost complete when she

is blissfully ensconced in her fully plumbed, tiled, floored and

‘warm as the hug of a pashmina’ Maison Coquelicot – until, that

is, a gang of macho Portuguese builders, a procession of Brits

behaving badly and the ghosts of boyfriends past begin to arrive

on her doorstep.

Karen soon finds her (dancing) feet in the small rural community

when she discovers the key to acceptance is le danse country.

And after a few shuffles and twirls she meets the love of her life – he has dark, shaggy hair, four paws and a wet nose…

KAREN WHEELER is a former fashion editor on the Mail on

Sunday and three-time winner of the prestigious Jasmine

Literary Award. She writes for the Financial Times ‘How to Spend

It’ magazine as well as for the Daily Mail, ES magazine, You

magazine and The Sunday Times ‘Style’ supplement. TOUTE

ALLURE is her second book.