France
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…
Continental drift
It is a long time since the term ‘sick man of Europe’ could be applied to Britain. France is now…
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…
