France
Bernard-Henri Lévy: ‘Brexit will not happen’
I meet Bernard-Henri Lévy in a colossally luxurious hotel on a tree-lined avenue just behind the Elysée Palace. The French…
The greatest French museum you’ve never heard of
Imagine a French museum that’s second only to the Louvre when it comes to paintings, with an eye-watering collection of…
The critics may have liked The Death of Stalin but the French certainly don’t
Should I or shouldn’t I go and see The Death of Stalin, showing at the French village cinema last Sunday…
Knife skills for eight-year-olds
Pig’s trotters. Lamb’s feet stuffed with their brains. Flayed wild rabbits, all sinew, muscle and eyeballs. Nude chickens with flopping…
Brexit for eight-year-olds
A week ago I plucked my eight-year-old grandson Oscar from the bosom of his rumbustious young family and took him…
Macron’s Thatcher moment has arrived
The honeymoon is over for Emmanuel Macron. His first 11 months in office have been something of a breeze —…
When it comes to food and wine, there’s no place like Rhône
As often, a good glass stimulated good talk. We were drinking some promising young Rhônes and the discussion ranged wide,…
Has Provence cured my cancer?
During the past three years I have spent quite a bit of time in a rented house in Provence. Volets…
Jeremy Clarke: The power of ‘Bonjour’
In France, or in Provence at least, polite rule number one is to say hello. You must offer a distinct…
Jeremy Clarke: How I lost an afternoon to two magnums of mid-range champagne
As I stood there, I was reminded of the man of no fixed abode who, several years back, aged 68,…
The heart is unstirred in Haneke’s morose critique of a fractured society: Happy End reviewed
The films of Michael Haneke wear a long face. Psychological terror, domestic horror, sick sex, genital self-harm — these are…
The perils of the boar-hunting season
The French countryside around here is teeming with wild boar. They visit the shack at night to eat the pansies…
Letters
Meeting halfway Sir: If our Brexit negotiator David Davis has not read Robert Tombs’s wonderful article ‘Lost in translation’ (21…
Lost in translation
If Michel Barnier and David Davis, in their regular dialogue of the deaf, seem to be inhabiting different mental universes,…
Alice’s restaurant
Though Alice Waters is not a household name here, that is precisely what she is in America — the best-known…
Low life
I arrived for lunch a bit late and was led to the dining table. Our hostess disappeared back into the…
Hurricane Harvey is bigger news than the bankers at Jackson Hole
In Houston last November I spent an evening at the city’s industrial-scale food bank, where I heard a presentation on…
Swine fever
‘Rightly is they called pigs,’ says a farmworker in Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow as he watches porkers grunt and squelch.…
The truth about Brexit? One professor’s guess is no better than another’s
Removing all trade and tariff barriers as part of a hard Brexit would generate ‘a £135 billion annual boost to…
Low life
Five and the Red One are a German covers band. It’s probably the most uninspiring name for a rock band…
Is Macron’s vanity presidency already falling apart?
The French president’s embarrassing attempts to reinvent himself as the new Tony Blair are not working
Low life
The hen party was seated at an outside restaurant table under the plane trees when I arrived. They sat with…
Diary
A trip to the supermarché at the beginning of our French month yielded many of the necessary things one also…
Cathar country
I once spent three months living in the Languedoc, writing my first novel. The highlight was the few days I…
France’s new right
The result in France in the first round of the Les Républicains party’s primary elections marks the political death of…
