London: The British author Peter Mayle, who sold the dream of giving up the 9-5 treadmill and relocating to a rural idyll to millions of harassed office workers all over the world in his best selling A Year in Provence, has died at the age of 78, his publisher announced on Friday.

Alfred A Knopf said: "We are sad to report that Peter Mayle, the beloved writer who wrote multiple best-selling books about life in Provence, died early today at a hospital near his home in the south of France."

Mayle was an Englishman who gave up a successful career in advertising in London and New York.

As an author he moved to Devon and began by writing educational books on sex for children but at the age of 46, he moved in the 1980s to rural Provence in south of France hoping to pen a novel.

Instead, he ended up with an engaging account of coping with plumbers and other local craftsmen as he did up a property in Ménerbes.

The resulting A Year in Provence had an initial print run of 3,000 but somehow it touched a chord with office workers the world over, whether jostled by crowds at Victoria station in London, pushed into a metro in Tokyo, braving the New York rush hour or wedged into a 2B bus in Calcutta.

It sold six million copies in 40 languages, and was turned into 1993 British TV series and a 2006 film, A Good Year, directed by Sir Ridley Scott.