Happy Chinese New Year to all our customers

Butterfly restaurant

Autumn days in France - where the food always seems that bit better than in the UK - we visited Jardin Plume, near rouen.

How strange that butterflies, sublime and delicate, should get such pleasure from rotten apples.

A ship of the desert

Just in case any reader of this blog, overwhelmed by Thesiger's great photos, thinks the Libre Livre team haven't seen their share of the ships of the desert.....

Lots of pots

Some of my favourite black and white photos were taken by Wilfrid Thesiger on his travels in Arabia and Pakistan.

This is not one of them. I took it in the potting shed of the chateau of Vandrimare, close to Rouen. Not the most challenging environment - but I dare say I ate better on my travels than Wilfrid did on his.

Another tree from Sheffield Park, one of the great mid-Sussex gardens.

Sussex is home to a number of magnificent landscape gardens, some owned by the National Trust, but many in private hands, open from time to time. Click to see some other images from Sussex Gardens

Even in mid-winter the variety of textures and shapes makes every walk a pleasure.

I was recently looking at some of the landscape photography of James Ravilious, son of the great artist Eric Ravilious.

James' beautiful pictures are particularly interesting as they are black and white, not the most obvious medium to use for landscape.

For those who are interested, more of James' pictures can be found here: Ravilious gallery

The picture above, of an acer in winter, was taken this morning at Sheffield Park

Hay Bluff

This picture shows the section of Offa's Dyke known as Hay Buff, just a few minutes drive from Hay-onWye, reknowned for its wonderful bookshops (around 30) and the Hay Literary Festival.

Down the the valley to the right lies Capel y Ffin, where Eric Gill the great type designer and sculptor moved sometime after leaving Ditchling.

The Libre Livre team is firmly rooted in Sussex, but if we ever were to make a move the Marches would be high on our list of possible alternatives.