Family holidays always carry a risk of dismaying revelations. Suddenly you are thrust together, 24/7, over many days, in a way only matched by Christmas (which is equally perilous). And so it was that, after ten days of driving around Provence and Occitanie, from Arles to the Camargue to the mighty Gorges of the Tarn, my older daughter this week suddenly said: ‘Why is Britain so hideous?’
The outburst was clearly prompted by the comparative beauty of France. My daughter is 18 and her only prior experience of France was grey wintry Paris in a boring school trip, so she was probably expecting more of the same dreariness. Instead, she was exposed to the extraordinary loveliness of France’s natural landscapes, in the sun, along with the plushness of the smaller cities, towns, and villages. And the swish public amenities. And the fine public lighting. And the lovely pavements.
And the trams. And the speeding trains. And the litter-less high streets. And the stone-built villages with cleverly illuminated cobbles. And the smart wooden public benches. And the sleek modern supermarkets. And the artful displays in the shops. And the tasteful shop fronts. And the public topiary. And the boxes of lovingly tended flowers. And the glass elevators by 12th century castles taking you to sophisticated underground car parks. And the roundabouts. My God, the roundabouts.
The fact is, much of France – outside the biggest cities – is chic, pretty, and suavely presented in a way which seems astonishing to any Brit. Sometimes it can feel like the whole nation of France is managed by their version of the National Trust, which brings with it some downsides: a tendency to tweeness, to over-curation. Nonetheless, I’ll cope with too many Zen gardens a la provencale if it is the price you pay for a diet of daily beauty, with nothing to visually distress.
Why is France so beautiful, probably the most beautiful country in the world? Part of it is just geographical luck (which Britain does not share): good weather, plentiful space (so they can hide inevitably ugly things), plus a magnificent diversity of landscapes, from the snowy Alps to the isles of Brittany, from the verdant Pays Basque to the wilds of the Vosges, the Jura, the Massif Central.
Some of it, also, is cowardice. France is the courtesan captured by gunslingers who gave up her freedom while saying ‘not the face, not the face’. France preserved her good looks from the bombs and barbarity of the Nazis by signing the shameful Armistice of 22 June 1940. Paris was saved but France’s honour was forever trashed. In this instance, Britain can stand taller: London has scars because we refused to submit.
None of this helps relatively hideous Britain get any less hideous, however. Where we can learn and gain from France is the final reason for its beauty: the French obsession with elegant presentation. As any traveller to France knows, if you buy a tartelette aux pommes in a patisserie or a nice plate from a pottery, someone will wrap it or box it with great care, turning it into a gift from France to you. They want it to look as good as possible.
And the French apply this mania for immaculate presentation to everything. From their street-signs to their bus stops to the fonts on the menus, everywhere there is evidence of someone caring about the design, even the most trivial or modern stuff – they make it lovely. Or at least harmonious. They present it with skill and attention, so the whole nation becomes a kind of Japanese fruit basket for trillionaires.
When I say France is beautiful and Britain is hideous, I am, of course, not being absolute. France has some ugly parts (urban sprawl, Clermont Ferrand) and some modern horrors (check out the new Luma tower in Arles). And Britain can boast some of the most beautiful cities on earth – Cambridge, Edinburgh, Bath – and some of the most sublime landscapes: the Inner Hebrides, the Lakes.
Looking at ugly things eventually degrades you
Unfortunately, as we all know, these are the exceptions. Because my daughter is right. Too much of Britain is hideous, and it is hideous because, apparently, unlike the French, we have long ceased to care. We have become slovenly, like a divorcee urinating into the sink. We stare at our ugly high streets, with their repulsive shop fronts, the kebab shops and the chicken shacks and the blaring Tesco blues – and we shrug. We build grim redbrick houses with the tiny dungeon windows because of fatuous eco-rules and we say ‘that’ll do’. We chuck litter around our towns because they can’t get any more tatty.
And this, I submit, is damaging the British soul. Looking at ugly things eventually degrades you, spiritually, emotionally, literally. The shoulders of the nation slump, the instinct is to shrink away and shop from home, worsening the neglect. This also impacts our economy, quite directly: post-pandemic tourism to Britin has not rebounded the way it has in, say, France. And one reason given by foreign visitors for staying away is Britain’s lack of beauty, i.e. Britain’s ugliness. It’s hard to hear that, but it is the case.
If this sounds like the counsel of despair, it should not be. Britain does not have to be the toilet of Europe. We might hope for new things from our new government, but that won’t happen: they are socialists, so they are too stupid to understand aesthetics, and often they prefer ugliness, because they think beauty is some kind of class conspiracy (see how they have immediately ripped the stipulations for beauty out of the national building code).
No, if we want to de-uglify Britain we need to rely on – sigh – the Conservatives. But as the Tories search for new purposes in opposition, I suggest this could be one of them. A real rallying cry. Make Britain Beautiful Again. We don’t have to accept dirty broken phone boxes cluttering our pavements. We don’t have to tolerate Barratt home new-builds that look like prison blocks in Utah.
The Tories should say: we will change all this. We will stop Britain eating cold beans out of a tin and we will scrub the nation until it shines. And the Tories should promise to do this, not least because it is do-able. It does not need economic miracles, it needs determination, hard work, good design, and the spine to tell whining architects to go jump. And then, one day, maybe in a decade, a French teenager will take a roadtrip around the UK and say, ‘wow, l’Angleterre est belle’.
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