France
Hollande equals Thatcher? Not quite, Monsieur le President, but keep trying
Have you ever tried discussing the merits of gun control with a Texan, or of deregulated labour markets with a…
Spellbound
A blushing James Woodall is riveted by Isabelle Huppert’s performance in Phaedra(s)
Low life
Hours before boarding the cross-Channel car ferry, I received a text message from the company warning of severe fuel shortages…
Hollande’s hollow crown
France’s president is looking more hopeless than ever. But French politics is such a mess that he’ll probably survive
Low life
A fresh start in a new gym in a foreign country. The serious young gym attendant didn’t speak a word…
Surreal, strange and scatological
Why do we put one work of art beside another? For the most part museums and galleries tend to stick…
Low life
On Sunday we were invited for lunch at Chez Bruno, an unbelievably posh restaurant in the south of France. At…
Low life
The tourist information office of the small French country town looked closed. Peering between the posters on the window glass,…
Britannia rued the waves
Military history is more popular than respected. It is not hard to see why. It is masculine history, a trifecta…
Low life
On Monday morning I was in a blind panic. The deadline for posted manuscript entries to the Daily Mail First…
A gentleman of Bordeaux
There was a moment during the war when De Gaulle was being more than usually impossible. Roosevelt, furious, asked Churchill…
Low life
While I was in Provence, my hostess and I went out one day for a walk in the hills. We…
Why we need migrants
It’s not about economics. It’s about our snobbish, slobbish culture
The Spectator’s notes
Surely there is a difference between Mark Carney’s intervention in the Scottish referendum last year and in the EU one…
Courchevel
The last time I stayed in Courchevel it was in a tatty roadside chalet a long way down the mountain.…
Low life
Before we left for Sunday lunch at the Les Deux Garçons restaurant, Aix-en-Provence, I checked the reviews on Tripadvisor. I’m…
Low life
In the Foreign Legion’s Museum of Memory at Aubagne, near Marseilles, I examined the kit, weapons and uniforms from the…
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that if Britain left the European Union, France could stop allowing British officials…
Game show
A few years ago, a distinguished cove in the diplomatic service was made High Commissioner to Australia. To prepare himself…
Hollande’s own emergency
His response to the Paris terror attacks has left the French president increasingly isolated and unpopular
Wild at heart
Delacroix’s frigid self-control concealed an emotional volcano. Martin Gayford explores the paradoxes that define the apostle of modernism
Another banking review is pointless: just carry on naming, shaming and jailing
Was the Financial Conduct Authority leaned on by the Chancellor to scrap its ‘review of banking culture’? Or did it…
Eurovision
Before cheap flights, trains were the economical way to discover Europe and its foibles. Personally, I enjoyed the old fuss…
France: #ToutsAuBistrot!
Julie Burchill hymns the joys of post-attack Paris
Why would a dissolute rebel like Paul Gauguin paint a nativity?
Martin Gayford investigates how this splendid Tahitian Madonna came about and why religion was ever-present in Gauguin's art
