France

Tuesday

Arabella Byrne

What the British can learn from French attitudes to culture

Asked to defend France’s reputation on the global stage, a French diplomat once told the International Herald Tribune, ‘If Germany has Siemens, we have Voltaire.’ In this vision lies something very obviously French: a single-minded belief in superiority grounded not in the future but in the glorious intellectual past. Schooled in the tradition of exception culturelle or cultural superiority, the French truly believe that their cultural capital is the finest in the world. Think Diderot, Condorcet, Sartre and Camus and you can see why. Attend a French soirée and you will be asked to quote sections of Michelet’s histories and make witty repartee about Barthesian structuralism over the salad It

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

Is Macron losing control of France?

There may be a touch of the Monday blues for Emmanuel Macron this morning as he scans the headlines in France. A new poll reveals that vaccine scepticism in his country has reached record levels, thanks to his recent belittling of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Sixty-one per cent of those canvassed expressed their doubts about the vaccine, up 18 per cent from last month. Only 23 per cent said they had confidence in the AstraZeneca jab. In contrast, 75 per cent of British people have faith in the vaccine. But if the French are increasingly reluctant to be vaccinated, they are determined to enjoy the arrival of spring – Covid restrictions

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Is the US to blame for the far-left takeover of France’s universities?

There is a belief in some quarters of the Anglosphere that the French are too wise to succumb to what is known across the Channel as ‘wokisme’. It’s true that in recent weeks Emmanuel Macron and his education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, have expressed their concern about what the latter described as a battle against ‘an intellectual matrix from American universities’. But the battle has already been won by the far-left in France who are largely in control of all forms of education.  The front cover of this week’s edition of the conservative magazine, Valeurs Actuelles, says it all: ‘Universities: laboratory of the lunatics’ Inside, the magazine describes how radical feminism,

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

My thrilling rendezvous with the sausage lady

One day last week we did a wine run up to Manosque in the foothills of the Alps, leaving early in the morning. Catriona drove, big Vernon squeezed into the back seat and made a nest for himself among a fortnight’s recycling rubbish. Along the road up to Manosque the almond trees were in blossom, and in the gardens yellow forsythia and mimosa. But last year’s dead leaves still clung about the naked branches of the forest. Manosque it was because we’re massive fans of a local red called La Blaque. But on the way we passed a Louis Latour wine outlet. Catriona likes their Viré-Clessé white so we stopped

Thursday

Lee Langley

Two for the road: We Are Not in the World, by Conor O’Callaghan, reviewed

A father and his estranged 20-year-old daughter set off across France, sharing the driver’s cabin of a long-haul truck. This is a road trip like no other: Paddy, deracinated, footloose, divorced, taking on a temporary job for reasons that become clear later; and daughter Kitty, spiky, provocative, shaved head, grubby jeans and sweater, wrapped in an old mink coat she’s pinched from her grandmother. Occasionally she rewards her father with an ambiguous affectionate response as their edgy banter veers in and out of dangerous territory: the minefield of parenthood. The narrative is fractured; nothing told chronologically, the surface deliberately throw-away — skewed punctuation, sentences left hanging. Conor O’Callaghan is a

Bruce Anderson

Nights – and wines – to remember in Paris

Some friends claim to be making marks on the wall to count the days until liberation. Ah, the forgotten delights of restaurants and foreign travel. In one long nostalgic phone call, we kept present discontents at bay by discussing Paris. Although I have partaken of three-rosette meals in the capital of gastronomy and was never disappointed, a different experience came to mind. This restaurant has never received Michelin’s highest accolade, not that it would care. It believes itself entitled to at least four rosettes. Its name is Chez l’Ami Louis, in the Troisième, not far from the Marais. I was introduced to it by Rémy and Mathilde, a couple who

Jeremy Clarke

My €25 Covid jab surprise

Around the time that poor M. Macron was casting televised aspersions on the AstraZeneca jab, I was offered one by Mme Michaud, our hardworking French village GP. Concerned about her bosoms, Catriona had visited for a routine appointment and while there had asked what the chances were of getting a Covid jab. By a stroke of good luck, Mme Michaud said she had a batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine arriving in a fortnight and would her friend like one as well? Consequently my name was pencilled on her list, but with a question mark against it. My busy oncologist at Marseille replied to my email within two minutes. He said

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Are Switzerland and France really ‘Islamophobic’?

Is Switzerland ‘Islamophobic’? Critics of the country’s decision to outlaw face coverings think so. The ‘Burqa ban’, which passed into law this week as a result of a narrow vote in a referendum, applies to any form of face covering in a public gathering, unless worn for health reasons, at religious congregations, or carnivals. The legislation is not, at least directly, aimed at Muslims. And, what’s more, very few Swiss Muslims wear a burqa or niqab: almost no-one in Switzerland wears a burka and only around 30 women wear the niqab, according to research by the University of Lucerne. But the condemnation has nonetheless been swift. It was ‘a dark day’ for Muslims, the Central Council of

Friday

John Keiger

Barnier and France fear Brexit Britain’s next moves

Michel Barnier – still officially the EU’s Brexit taskforce leader – gives few interviews. As a Savoyard and keen mountaineer, as he habitually reminds us, he is a cautious man who advances step by step with the long climb firmly in his sights. So it was something of a surprise to see him appear on 16 February before the French Senate Brexit follow-on committee (renamed ‘groupe de suivi de la nouvelle relation euro-britannique’). It is a sign of the importance of how Brexit will play out for the French that the Senate has formed a very senior 20-strong commission to monitor and react to Brexit implementation and next stage negotiations.

Thursday

Jonathan Miller

The provocative writer who could be the next French president

Montpellier The French ‘grand’ journalist Éric Zemmour is among the most watched, provocative and frequently prosecuted writers in the country. He is now contemplating a piratical presidential challenge that could blow open next year’s presidential election. A poll last month conducted for the news magazine Valeurs Actuelles says that Zemmour could win 13 per cent of the votes in the first round of the French presidential election. That’s more impressive than it seems. In the cavalry charge of a first round, when a dozen or more candidates are possible, 13 per cent is more than enough to unsettle not just the re-election campaign of President Emmanuel Macron. It could simultaneously

The Spectator

Which countries still haven’t had a single case of Covid?

French lessons France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in jail, with two of them suspended, for corruption and ‘influence peddling’ after seeking to bribe a judge. Some other French leaders who have been convicted in criminal courts:— Jacques Chirac got a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for setting up fake jobs to claim public funds for political purposes.— Christine Lagarde was convicted in 2016 of making payouts to a businessman while she was finance minister in 2008. She was not punished and went on to be appointed head of the European Central Bank.— In 2020 former PM François Fillon was given a five-year sentence, three suspended,

Jeremy Clarke

The beauty of French nurses

I was supine on the slab and a nurse was rigging me up via wires and tubes to machines and monitors. She was an exemplary old-school nurse combining human kindness with efficient manual dexterity. Had she been vaccinated against Covid, I asked her? Oh yes, of course she had, she said. And what about you, she said. Have you had the mandatory pre-treatment Covid test? ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I had it tomorrow.’ (My automatic confusion of the French words for yesterday and tomorrow could, I suspect, be explained in psychoanalytical terms.) Now another, younger female nurse appeared by my side. She was lovely and reminded me of a young

Monday

Jonathan Miller

Nicolas Sarkozy and a very French corruption scandal

Nicolas Sarkozy, 66, President of France from 2007 to 2012, currently a valued member of Emmanuel Macron’s informal council of advisors, was today sentenced to a year in prison for bribery and corruption in a case with roots in his murky relationship with the late Muammar Gaddafi, the not much missed brotherly leader of Libya. This scandal is a tangled web, even by French standards. For those who have spent years attempting to get to the bottom of it, it offers the tantalising prospect that Sarkozy could become the first former French President ever to be thrown in the Paris prison called La Santé – although it doesn’t have a

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Macron is taking on the eco killjoys

Emmanuel Macron won’t forget the Yellow Vest movement in a hurry. The ragtag army that recruited regardless of sex, age, region and political persuasions, seriously rattled the president of France in the winter of 2018-19. Never in his wildest dreams could Macron have imagined, when he signed off his fuel tax rise, that within weeks he would be barricaded inside the Élysée as outside heavily-armed police faced down furious protestors. Still, it taught Macron one thing: that those in the provinces see the world differently to the progressive political and media class in Paris. That’s why Macron has prioritised combating Islamism and uncontrolled immigration over the environment in the lead

Thursday

R.T. Howard

English beef: France’s loathing of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’

To find out who your true friends and rivals really are, just gauge the reaction to news of your latest success story. It is revealing, for example, that many French officials have taken grave exception to the stunning speed and efficiency of our national vaccination programme. This became clear at the end of January, when President Emmanuel Macron defied medical opinion by unjustly claiming that the AstraZeneca jab was ‘quasi-ineffective’ for elderly people. His cynical tone, remarkable even by the frosty standards of the rest of the EU, was echoed by his Europe Minister, Clément Beaune, who stated that ‘the UK has taken a lot of risks in authorising Astra-Zeneca

Jeremy Clarke

Why I need to become a French citizen

After weeks of living in the 18th century, going everywhere on foot and encountering few other souls, I drove to Marseille for a hospital appointment and got stuck in a crazy traffic jam. As a reintroduction to the human race, it was a brutal shock. Hooting, shouting, sirens, blue lights, motorcyclists doing wheelies, cars mounting pavements and grass verges, cars forcing a path through the stationary traffic using their bumpers as buffers: utter chaos. In an hour and a half the three-lane queue moved forward 80 yards. The chaos reminded me of a taxi ride I once took from Palermo airport. On the half-hour drive into the city we had

Thursday

James Forsyth

It is time to make friends with the EU

On Monday morning, Clément Beaune, Emmanuel Macron’s Europe Minister, clipped out the section of his media interview criticising Britain’s vaccination strategy and posted it on Twitter. He declared: ‘What is happening in the UK is not something I envy. It is a strategy of massive acceleration which also means taking more risks because the Covid situation is much worse there.’ Such remarks are becoming something of a habit for Beaune. He fired off tweets lambasting Brexit in the days after the deal was done and grinned broadly in an interview this year when he was questioned about reports that British cabinet ministers had asked him to tone it down on

Jeremy Clarke

My French lessons with Lord Nelson

Every Friday afternoon the foreign correspondent and I attend a French lady’s home for our one-hour French lesson. The foreign correspondent has lived happily in France for about 20 years with only ‘hallo’, ‘yes’, ‘red wine, please’, ‘same again, chief’, ‘keep it coming’ and ‘cheerio’. His wife is smoothly fluent and has been urging him for years to set himself the feat of learning French. It was at the end of January, when the subject came up during a four-hour lunch, that he surprised us all by agreeing that it was indeed high time. His one condition was that I make it a joint enterprise. We have started from scratch

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

Macron is using Islam to outmanoeuvre Le Pen

There was a rally in Paris on Sunday at which a couple of hundred protestors vented their anger at the French government’s ‘anti-separatist bill’ which was passed by the National Assembly on Tuesday. It was a disparate but predictable gathering of what one broadcaster described as ‘anti-racism, left-wing, pro-Palestinian and other activist groups’. The demonstrators were repeating the claims made by some left-wing politicians that the bill will stigmatise the country’s Muslims. On the contrary, retort the government, who define the bill as a ‘Respect for Republican values’. They say it will protect the majority of Muslims from the minority of extremists whose objective is to create a separate society in

Friday

Kate Andrews

France’s vaccine volte face

France has become the first country in the world to recommend a different vaccine regime for those who have recovered from the virus. The country’s public health authority has recommended that people previously infected with Covid-19 only receive one jab, rather than two. The advice is based on preliminary data, including two studies from the United States, that show the combination of antibodies built up from having the virus, plus one jab, creates immunity that ‘is equal to or even exceeds’ having two vaccines. It wasn’t long ago that French ministers were publicly criticising the UK’s strategy It’s too early to definitively say whether France’s strategy will work. For one thing,