France
Mon dieu! Our French residency permits have arrived
For EU nationals living in Britain and wanting to legally remain after Brexit, a letter or an email was enough…
Starmer's Labour is following the French Socialists into oblivion
Why does Keir Starmer seem set on following the example of the French Socialist party, and leading Labour into electoral…
The real problem with Macron’s elite school
President Emmanuel Macron announced today the closure of the notorious École Nationale d’Administration, the elite finishing school for the senior…
Macron's Napoleon complex
May 5th this year will be the two hundredth anniversary of Napoleon’s death on Saint Helena, the tiny island in…
A new blossoming: David Hockney paints Normandy
In 2018 David Hockney went to Normandy to look at the Bayeux Tapestry, which he had not seen for more…
Why I’m glad to see the back of Call My Agent!
For the past few weeks I have been binge-watching the Netflix series Call My Agent! (or Dix pour cent, as…
The tyranny of French bureaucracy
Applying for a French bank account is like trying for a permit to open a Christian bookshop in North Korea.…
France accuses Britain of vaccine 'blackmail'
In some ways you have to admire the sheer shamelessness of the French government. To spend the start of the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The provocative writer who could be the next French president
The French journalist who could unseat President Macron
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…
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,…
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…
English beef: the sinister side to France’s mistrust of Britain
The sinister side to France’s mistrust of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’
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…
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…
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…
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…
The rise of Florian Philippot, France’s answer to Nigel Farage
These are dispiriting times for France. The 6pm curfew and the closure of bistros and theatres have taken all the…
