France
My dreams of Jeremy Clarke
The other week my eldest daughter and I were staying with friends in Richmond for the launch of Jeremy’s third…
How Miss La La captured Degas’s imagination
‘Can you come Saturday morning to my studio, 19 bis rue Fontaine?’ Degas wrote to Edmond de Goncourt in 1879.…
The 28-year-old who legitimised Marine Le Pen
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally – formerly the National Front – is expected to triumph for a third time running…
Second life: Playboy, by Constance Debré, reviewed
Having abandoned her marriage and her career as a lawyer, Debré re-emerges as a lesbian, a writer, and a seducer equal to Casanova
Who will my wife marry next?
Since I had a brush with death a couple of years ago, I have often wondered who my far younger…
Why are French politicians obsessed with world war two?
War talk is all the rage in France. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza are often cited, but the war…
France has become Europe’s Wild West
New Caledonia must not become the ‘Wild West’ declared Emmanuel Macron last week during his flying visit to the Pacific…
Germanophobia is growing in France
There was a time earlier this century when few politicians in France would dare criticise Germany. The country was the…
Letters: the real problem with a Labour super-majority
Good trade-off Sir: I applaud your excellent editorial (‘Trading in Falsehoods’, 6 April) – a succinct and insightful essay on…
Macron vs Putin: this summer’s Olympic battle
Dixmont, Yonne Last summer, Emmanuel Macron lashed out at France’s constitution because it prevents him from running for a third…
Adrift on the Canadian frontier: The Voyageur, by Paul Carlucci, reviewed
Based on the 19th-century ‘voyageur’ Alexis de Martin, Carlucci’s young protagonist is befriended by kindly strangers. But what are their true motives?
What we owe to the self-taught genius Carl Linnaeus
Bumptious, uncouth and the despair of his schoolmasters, Linnaeus died almost forgotten. Yet he established a system of taxonomy that we still use two centuries later
The plot to bring down Emmanuel Macron
Last week Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the Olympic aquatic centre that will host the swimming and diving events at this summer’s…
Why Thames Water is the pariah of post-privatisation capitalism
‘It would have been ideal not to have so much poo in the water,’ said Oxford captain Leonard Jenkins after…
How Africa fell out of love with France
The death of Françafrique
Letters: The Lucy Letby killings shouldn’t mean we lose trust in all NHS managers
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
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
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
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
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
Watching the kids and police play hide and seek
Why Europe riots
What’s behind the rise of gang violence across Europe?
French racism is not the problem
Last week we learned that a woman in a park in Skegness was dragged into the bushes and raped by…
Must Paris reinvent itself?
Muriel Zagha 27 April 2024 9:00 am
The beautifully preserved, elitist metropolis now looks increasingly out of step with neighbouring capitals and may be forced to become more multicultural