A journey through the past and present of a little-known area of south-west France. Explores the people, places and events that shaped a land once too important to ignore. A whole library has been written about the Lauragais in French, but virtually nothing in English. The Lauragais lies in south-west France at the heart of Occitania. Today it is largely ignored by the millions who visit its neighbours each year - Toulouse and Carcassonne - but in times gone by it rarely escaped the attentions of the great and the good, or the ambitious and the avaricious. This is a book with big characters - Simon de Montfort, the Black Prince, Thomas Jefferson and the Duke of Wellington among others - but most of all it tells the story of the people who have shaped this land, the living and the dead, families that have lived in the same house or village for hundreds of years. This is the story of their lives, their religion, their forgotten language and their environment. On the autoroute, a journey through the Lauragais will take you three-quarters of an hour, but all you will see are tantalising glimpses of gorgeous countryside and distant signs of human habitation. In this book, the author takes you on a more leisurely trip through time in a land that is endearingly modest about its illustrious past.

Menu from the Midi explores French gastronomy from the farmer's field to the dining room table. Concentrating on the South of France, the book is structured as a menu carefully compiled to give the reader a balanced diet of gastronomy, history, legend and local colour. Uniquely, it adds into this mix a celebration of the dedicated and passionate people who produce some of the finest raw ingredients and foodstuffs you are ever likely to taste. Appreciating good food and wine needs the right ambiance, the right company and plenty of time. Sit back, relax and savour the oldest sparkling wine in the world, le Rolls-Royce of olives, pink garlic soup, meats of the black Gascon pig, the legendary cassoulet, cheese from the caves of Roquefort, and learn how the Midi's ornate pigeon towers ensured a constant supply of roast pigeon. No wonder the father of food journalism and gastronomic guides, Grimod de La Reyniere, had this to say 200 years ago: 'In good towns of the Midi, a great dinner is an affair of state. One speaks of it three months beforehand and digesting it lasts six weeks.'