France
Low life
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…
We’ll always have Paris
Some friends claim to be making marks on the wall to count the days until liberation. Ah, the forgotten delights…
Truckload of trouble
A father and his estranged 20-year-old daughter set off across France, sharing the driver’s cabin of a long-haul truck. This…
Low life
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…
Barometer
French lessons France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in jail, with two of them suspended, for…
C’est Zemmour
The French journalist who could unseat President Macron
Low Life
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 the ‘Anglo-Saxons’
Low life
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…
Low life
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…
Macron eyes up a new career
How is France dealing with its latest Covid wave? Not particularly well, if you listen to the director of epidemiological research…
Low life
I was tipped off to meet a white Hyundai at a French motorway toll rest area at 2.30 p.m. (I…
Liberté, égalité, complicité
The sex abuse scandal rocking the French elite
Argentine conquests
When Napoleon III proclaimed himself Emperor of France in 1852, he unwittingly kickstarted quality wine production in Chile and Argentina.…
Low life
Here, as in Britain, everyone is a log expert. The woodman leaves a heap at the bottom of the drive…
France’s Covid response is a source of national shame
France is the only permanent member of the UN Security Council not to have developed a coronavirus vaccine, and it…
Franco-Hungarian empire
The unlikely alliance of Orban and Macron
Low life
A new year and another round of medical treatments in the French health system. On Saturday morning, needing a blood…
