France

How Africa fell out of love with France

9 September 2023 9:00 am

The death of Françafrique

Letters: The Lucy Letby killings shouldn’t mean we lose trust in all NHS managers

2 September 2023 9:00 am

Murder mystery Sir: I once made a diagnosis of a very rare condition too late to cure the patient. She…

The joy of French motorways

2 September 2023 9:00 am

The news that Heineken, the Dutch brewer, has sold its business in Russia to a local buyer for a token…

The ‘historic’ national dishes which turn out to be artful PR exercises

19 August 2023 9:00 am

Japan’s ramen ‘tradition’ was created in 1958 to use up surplus imported flour, while Pizza Margherita’s specious royal connection helped boost Naples’s tourist trade

Enforce the borders, stop the boats, save lives

18 August 2023 6:15 pm

Rishi Sunak has failed in his pledge to ‘Stop the Boats’, and the £480 million deal he signed with France…

Love in idleness: The Four Corners of the Heart, by Françoise Sagan, reviewed

15 July 2023 9:00 am

In an atmosphere of languid torpor on a French family estate, an unfortunate relationship develops between a son, a father and a mother-in-law

The fine art of French rioting

8 July 2023 9:00 am

Watching the kids and police play hide and seek

Why Europe riots

8 July 2023 9:00 am

What’s behind the rise of gang violence across Europe?

French racism is not the problem

8 July 2023 9:00 am

Last week we learned that a woman in a park in Skegness was dragged into the bushes and raped by…

The French riots threaten the state’s very existence

3 July 2023 4:27 am

How dangerous are riots to the very existence of the French state? Most commentators avoid the question and concentrate on causes.…

The beauty of rosé and roses

17 June 2023 9:00 am

What an idyllic setting. We were amidst the joys of high summer in England, with just enough of a breeze…

The Franco-Prussian war changed the map of Europe – so why are we so ignorant about it?

17 June 2023 9:00 am

Rachel Chrastil describes how Bismarck, relying on Gallic pride to provoke the war he wanted, ensured that France would fight without a single ally

Wikipedia does more justice to this fascinating story than this film: Chevalier reviewed

10 June 2023 9:00 am

Chevalier is a biopic of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whom you’ve probably never heard of, as I hadn’t. He…

The Britishness of Bordeaux

3 June 2023 9:00 am

Burgundy or Bordeaux? We were discussing that unending question during dinner over the weekend. I think that there is only…

Haunted by Old Russia: Rachmaninoff’s lonely final years

27 May 2023 9:00 am

Exiled from Russia and often denigrated in America, Rachmaninoff lived in a fug of unbearable, impenetrable sadness, says Paul Kildea

Can Macron get through the day without insulting the Brits?

10 March 2023 6:18 pm

The editorial in today’s Le Figaro heralds the dawn of a 21st century Entente Cordiale and the newspaper carries an interview…

The murder of Lola and the failure of Marconism

19 October 2022 4:00 pm

Last Friday, a beautiful 12-year-old Paris girl named Lola failed to come home from middle school. Later that evening, her…

My battle with an ant

8 October 2022 9:00 am

At eight o’clock in the morning a nurse injected me with a radioactive marker and told me to go away…

My three-night retreat with the nuns

24 September 2022 9:00 am

We were four round the little table in the nunnery kitchen: a 90-year-old German lady and her man; a nun…

Marine Le Pen wants France to become the next Sweden

20 September 2022 9:33 pm

While Emmanuel Macron spent Sunday in London honouring the memory of the late Queen Elizabeth, Marine Le Pen marked her…

The inconvenient truth about France’s forest fires

16 September 2022 5:35 pm

Montpellier Last month the Prime Minister of France, Elisabeth Borne, visited the south-west of the country to offer her support…

Zemmour is his own worst enemy

14 September 2022 5:10 pm

Eric Zemmour is back. The bogeyman of French politics spent the summer licking his wounds after his far-right Reconquest party…

What kompromat does Trump have on Macron?

31 August 2022 1:05 am

Did Donald Trump have kompromat on Emmanuel Macron within the secret files seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago Xanadu?…

Could Macron trigger British blackouts?

26 August 2022 7:55 pm

‘We are living the end of an era of abundance,’ according to Emmanuel Macron, ‘the end of the abundance of…