France
Rosé and roses
What an idyllic setting. We were amidst the joys of high summer in England, with just enough of a breeze…
The war that changed the map of Europe
Rachel Chrastil describes how Bismarck, relying on Gallic pride to provoke the war he wanted, ensured that France would fight without a single ally
False notes
Chevalier is a biopic of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whom you’ve probably never heard of, as I hadn’t. He…
Discovering St Julien
Burgundy or Bordeaux? We were discussing that unending question during dinner over the weekend. I think that there is only…
Discordant times
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?
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
Last Friday, a beautiful 12-year-old Paris girl named Lola failed to come home from middle school. Later that evening, her…
Low life
At eight o’clock in the morning a nurse injected me with a radioactive marker and told me to go away…
Low life
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
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
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
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?
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?
‘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
Earlier this month I spent a week in Sicily, driving south from Palermo to Agrigento and then east to Syracuse…
The French scapegoat
On 15 June 1645, as Thomas Fairfax’s soldiers picked over the scattered debris on the Naseby battlefield, they made a…
Diary
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
Europe’s looming energy wars
This summer marks a truce. But if, as expected, Liz Truss becomes prime minister, it is almost inevitable that tensions…
Letter from France
Back in 1997 when I was narked on by a fellow journalist (Simon Walters, currently of the Times, then of…
What’s in my frunk?
Hello, and welcome to episode one of What’s in My Frunk?, the first in an occasional Spectator series of news…
Low life
All afternoon I had been horizontal next to an electric fan, sometimes sleeping, sometimes awake and sometimes halfway between those…
Macron’s Russian oil plan is bound to fail
It will drain Vladimir Putin of funds for his war machine. It will bring down inflation. And it might even…
Low life
Nothing in the beach hotel was made of plastic. It wasn’t advertised as being a plastic-free hotel, but we noticed…
High life
It’s nice to be back on the old continent again, especially after getting within a couple of hundred yards of…
