Two glorious events in Austria, the first in Salzburg, in the wine vaults of the Arts Hotel, built in 1350, just down the street from where Mozart was born. The second was in the Vienna city library, over 230 people packed into the space, sitting on stairs, standing, squatting on the floor, many of them looking about 13 years old. I later learned that two of the city schools are using my Bruno novels to teach English! 

Usually at these readings in Germany and Austria and Switzerland, about one in ten of the of the books I am asked to signed are the original English editions, but now I am getting people coming with the French editions of Bruno for me to sign. 

There were two firsts in Vienna. One woman came up with the Czech edition of the second Bruno novel and another came up with the 1986 English edition of my book on Gorbachev and Perestroika. It is striking, heartwarming and rather humbling to be reading to people who take books and writers, even writers of crime stories, so very seriously.

At my hotel when I returned after the Salzburg reading, a parcel awaited me with an anonymous note attached. It read: “Dear Herr Walker, I see in your latest book in English that you appreciate our fine Gruner Veltliner wines from Austria. Please accept this bottle for the pleasure your books have given me and my wife.” 

And in Vienna, after recording an hour-long broadcast for the hugely popular Sunday morning radio show Café am Sonntag, one of my interviewers searched Vienna to find me a bottle of an Austrian whisky called A 13. The name signifies that it had been stored 13 years in cask, and very fine it is. What delightful people.

September so far has been unusually hot in the Perigord and the winemakers are crossing their fingers that the sunshine lasts through the rest of the month, which should mean an excellent vintage this year. 

The cold spring and rains in June and early July had worried them, but while the harvest will be late, it should be very good indeed. The one great fear is the storms that usually come with the equinox around September 21. 

My Green friends are also worrying, because more and more winemakers in the region are going bio and avoiding pesticides and chemical treatments. But if we get heavy rains later this month and not enough wind and sun to dry the grapes, they fear that an outbreak mildew of mildew could provoke an anti-bio backlash. And while sulphur dust in limited quantities is approved for organic farmers, they prefer to use something more bio. 

Some are experimenting with diluted milk as a preventive and others are using a solution of water and garlic. Put one whole bulb of garlic in a litre of water with a few drops of liquid soap for a day, then strain it and dilute in with ten times as much water and spray. It works in our vegetable garden.