France

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…

Europe’s new migrant crisis

21 August 2022 5:50 pm

Earlier this month I spent a week in Sicily, driving south from Palermo to Agrigento and then east to Syracuse…

Why was Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s beautiful wife, so reviled?

20 August 2022 9:00 am

On 15 June 1645, as Thomas Fairfax’s soldiers picked over the scattered debris on the Naseby battlefield, they made a…

What’s the point of the NHS if it doesn’t work?

13 August 2022 9:00 am

We left prepared. Bottles of water, protein snacks, phone chargers, portable Scrabble (even the teenagers can look at the internet…

Liberté, égalité, nudité: France’s new sexual politics

13 August 2022 9:00 am

France’s new sexual politics

Europe’s looming energy wars

11 August 2022 2:15 am

This summer marks a truce. But if, as expected, Liz Truss becomes prime minister, it is almost inevitable that tensions…

My debt to Boris Johnson

23 July 2022 9:00 am

Back in 1997 when I was narked on by a fellow journalist (Simon Walters, currently of the Times, then of…

The hidden benefit of an electric car

23 July 2022 9:00 am

Hello, and welcome to episode one of What’s in My Frunk?, the first in an occasional Spectator series of news…

The joy of a children’s choir

9 July 2022 9:00 am

All afternoon I had been horizontal next to an electric fan, sometimes sleeping, sometimes awake and sometimes halfway between those…