France
Will the Mistral drive me to murder?
So far this latest Mistral wind has blown for two and a half weeks. The Mistral is said to blow…
Meet Santini: the world’s worst tourist guide
Santino was unusually short in the leg and, in his mid-twenties, was already rapidly losing his hair. He had recently…
Notre Dame is an architectural nullity
Notre Dame is only important from a Shakespeare’s-birthplace point of view. Architecturally it is a nullity beside the cathedrals of…
Hope will rise out of the ashes of Notre Dame
‘Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries,’ wrote Victor Hugo in Notre-Dame de Paris. ‘The man, the…
The truth is messy. Village gossip is even messier
An angry villager accosted me outside my house as I came through my front door. ‘You’re wrong about those horses,’…
It may seem incredible, but I’d trust an Italian over a Frenchman any day
For a few years before coming to Italy, I lived in Paris and I cannot tell you the life-enhancing difference…
David Cairns explains how we learned to love Berlioz
According to his friend and fellow-composer Ernest Reyer, the last words Berlioz spoke on his deathbed were: ‘They are finally…
Europe’s culture clash: Macron vs Salvini is a battle over a continent’s soul
Two weeks ago Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s vice-premier and Labour Minister and the top politician of the Five Star Movement…
How an anarchist music student become of the fashion greats: the life of Christian Dior
Strange to think when you visit the Christian Dior show at the V&A that his time as designer was so…
Hell — and heaven – on the French Riviera
We drove down from the hills to visit friends of friends with a house by the sea and on the…
Portrait of the week: Theresa May’s double defeat on Brexit
Home Political hobbyists speculated on the future of Brexit if the government fell, if a new Conservative leader was chosen,…
We lost our elderly, dementing French charge
I entered the cave house carrying groceries and panting from the climb to find an old hippie woman displaying rugs…
France’s second world war shame
The monument to this French village’s war dead is a plain white stone block with the head of a grizzled…
Is Emmanuel Macron having a meltdown?
Emmanuel Macron was elated when France won the World Cup in July. The photograph of him leaping out of his…
The perils of smoking three-year-old Glaswegian skunk
Three years ago we were given a bag of skunk, Catriona and I, provenance Glasgow. It was one gigantic dried…
40-plus reasons to love and hate France
I apologised, was gladly granted an indulgence, and on Sunday I packed a small bag and reached into a drawer…
‘I should just shut up’: Dominic West on #MeToo and the perils of talking politics
Lounging confidently on the sofa of a Soho hotel suite, Dominic West has been beaming at me, but now his…
450 bottles of red? What more could I want from a neighbour
I have a friend here in this French village to which we moved just over a week ago. He is…
The invisible woman of French cinema: Faces Places reviewed
Faces Places is a documentary directed by Agnès Varda in collaboration with JR, the famous Parisian photographer and muralist (although,…
A foretaste of Frexit
Moving day. The contents of a hillside shack to be moved four miles to a cave house perched high on…
Back from the brink
The long table was set out under four beautifully pollarded plane trees festooned with coloured lanterns and red balloons. Twenty…
The record bull run must end soon. So is it time for a return to gold?
All good things must come to an end, including summer holidays and bull markets. The bull run in US shares…
A captivating addition to the filmography of the first world war: The Guardians reviewed
There are moments in The Guardians when you can imagine you’re in the wrong art form. Time stills, the frame…
Why the kindness of strangers trumps a pagan festival
The entire Alpine village, contemptuously dismissed recently in an online tourist guide as a nondescript centre of old peasants and…
Make Rosé Pink Again!
When we first moved to the Languedoc, the less poncey part of the south of France nearly 20 years ago,…
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