France
Taking French leave
With more than a dozen acclaimed novels to her name, not to mention short stories, poetry, a memoir and a…
Low life
The most visible local landmark is a solitary two-headed Jurassic mountain called Le Bessillon, six miles long and 800 metres…
Low life
France is divided into a red zone and a green zone. We’re green. Green for go. From this morning we…
Breaking out
Lifting lockdown is a worldwide experiment
Low life
They made a better job of sorting out my waterworks
Covid statistics are just politics by other means
Statistics is the continuation of politics by other means, to misquote Clausewitz. One hundred and fifty years after the crushing…
Low life
Once a week we break French emergency law and have a friend round for drinks on the terrace. The terrace…
Paris’s banlieues are burning once again
One of the persistent misconceptions of the riots that swept through France in the autumn of 2005 is that they…
France’s citizens’ climate convention has come back to bite Macron
Those of us who are sceptical about the worth of citizens’ assemblies have been noting with interest the upshot of…
Low life
In France the rule for going for a walk stipulates an hour in duration or a kilometre in distance. We…
Could coronavirus lead to Frexit?
Is France flirting with the idea of Frexit again? Coronavirus is currently provoking a chorus of ‘reprendre le contrôle’ (take…
Low life
With my signed and dated laissez-passer in my pocket, I trotted down to the village to see if I could…
A stranger to herself
How can you recover the teenage girl you were? Not just recall the memories and recount the events — this…
Liberté, égalité and fraternité are being put to the test in France
When I left my apartment for my morning run today I saw that someone had scrawled on the courtyard in…
Is France being pushed to breaking point?
As France prepares to enter its third week of confinement the Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, has warned that ‘the fight…
France’s downward spiral of coronavirus repression
In France there is a palpable sense of administrative and political panic in how to deal with the coronavirus epidemic.…
Untruthful
To tell you the truth about The Truth, even though it stars Catherine Deneuve at her most Catherine Deneuve-ish (i.e.…
Low life
The three of us — me, Catriona and her daughter Skye — were having a wash and brush-up before going…
Low Life
On a hard chair next to the waiting-room door, I sat for an hour defusing thoughts of my own demise,…
British police must learn from France in dealing with Extinction Rebellion
I’ve always been a fan of the French police, in part because when I lived in the south of the…
The French connection
Macron has fallen under Boris’s spell
All forecasts are off if Iran shuts the Strait of Hormuz
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… Late last year, a range of forecasts…
Islamists have opened a terrifying new front in their war with France
France has endured an appalling series of Islamist terror attacks in recent years. One might feel a sense of relief…
Hell is an expat dinner party
I just don’t understand it. Emigrating from Britain to France is a big step. Shifting from one culture to another…
Trump is saving Nato
It’s almost Nato as usual when Emmanuel Macron calls Nato ‘brain dead’. It’s Nato as usual, and Donald Trump as…
