France

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 4 January 2018

As I stood there, I was reminded of the man of no fixed abode who, several years back, aged 68, made it into the local paper charged with shoplifting. He’d failed to steal a bottle of champagne and a hat to the value of £75. In court, the magistrate had inquired as to the brand of champagne. On being told that it was Pol Roger, he jocularly commended the tramp on his refined taste, and said that it inclined him towards leniency. That gay tramp came to mind now, two days before Christmas, as I stood in front of the champagne section in the French hypermarket, tempted by the special

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The ‘Queen of France’ is making life difficult for Macron

The new year in France has got off to its traditionally violent start, with hundreds of cars set ablaze across the country and an attempted lynching of two police officers in the suburbs of Paris. Yet in the increasingly surreal world of social media, what is causing uproar is Brigitte Macron’s breach of protocol to stand beside her husband on state visits. The custom has been for president’s wives to stand behind their husbands, but Madame Macron has said that from now she’ll be side by side with her man. ‘A woman does not have to be behind’, she is quoted as saying by RTL radio. Her comments were subsequently elaborated on

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron is becoming the darling of the Deplorables

The French have long loved a beauty contest and this year’s Miss France was screened on Saturday night on prime time TV. While ITV dropped Miss World from its main schedule in 1988 in response to feminist protests, beauty pageants continue to pull in the punters in France, with a peak audience of 8.8 million watching Miss Pas-de-Calais win this year’s crown. Feminist groups claim that Miss France is an offensive anachronism that should be consigned to the past. Raphaëlle Rémy-Leleu, spokesperson for the ‘Dare to be Feminist’ organisation, said ‘it was a shame that the only night of the year dedicated to women on TV cultivates the idea of female

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

Laurent Wauquiez could bring Emmanuel Macron crashing back to earth

Laurent Wauquiez has done the easy part. It was never seriously in doubt that the 42-year-old was going to win last night’s contest to elect the new leader of Les Républicains, a position vacated by François Fillon after his humiliating presidential campaign in May. But now for the real test: challenging the hegemony of Emmanuel Macron. In the six months since he became the youngest president of the 5th Republic, the 39-year-old Macron has invaded centre-right territory. Not only that but he’s made off with several high-profile Républicains, including Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire. An opinion poll last month revealed that his economic reforms have made him

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

The French left is tearing itself apart over Islam

Six months into his presidency, Emmanuel Macron looks untouchable. He has conquered the unions, and his political opponents are a shambles – none more so than the Socialists. Just how divided they are was demonstrated earlier this month when a vicious war of words erupted within the French left. The cause was Islam, an issue that has been agitating Socialists for decades. When the first Socialist president of the Fifth Republic, François Mitterrand, was elected in 1981, his government was initially a friend of Islam. As the eighties wore on though, some on the left became alarmed at the demands being made of the Republic: prayer rooms in factories and the right to pray

Jasper Rees

When things fall apart

The films of Michael Haneke wear a long face. Psychological terror, domestic horror, sick sex, genital self-harm — these are the joyless tags of his considerable oeuvre. Such an auteur is not the obvious sort for sequels: The Piano Teacher 2 or Hidden — Again! aren’t destined for your nearest multiplex. And yet his new film is an intriguing knight’s move away from his last. Amour (2012) was a hot-button portrait of dementia in which an elderly husband watched his wife’s mind drift away as if on an ice floe. Eventually, he smothered her with a pillow. In Happy End, the widower is back, and this time he’s out to

Wednesday

Jonathan Miller

Emmanuel Macron looks shiftier and less likeable by the minute

One of the must-have applications for smartphones in France is called C’est la Grève, which helpfully shows all the strikes ongoing at the moment, and those to come, with useful regional breakdowns. It’s indispensable for le planning and proof that French developers understand how to tailor digital products to local market demands. At the moment at the top of the list on my C’est la Grève app is a national and general strike this Thursday, which promises to be a key moment in what looks like an increasingly desperate effort to bring down Jupiter, Emmanuel Macron, president of the republic. The French left, when they are not ripping each other to

Saturday

Jonathan Miller

What has France’s anti-Brexit rock star got against Britain?

The latest single of Bertrand Cantat, a French pop singer who murdered his girlfriend and who was present in the house where his ex-wife killed herself, is being heavily played on French pop music stations. This would be of little interest to anyone who isn’t following French pop music or observing the tolerance of the French for men who abuse women, except that his new hit song is about us. L’Angleterre (England) is vaguely an ode to a refugee camped in the jungle on the French side of the Channel, trying to get to England. Mr Cantat advises that this is not a good idea. The times are changing but

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 2 November 2017

The French countryside around here is teeming with wild boar. They visit the shack at night to eat the pansies and nose up the flower-beds, and their violent flare-ups over a disputed morsel wake us up. Standing about in the lane the other night, blocking it, was a 25-strong gathering of them. They ranged from cheerful little tackers to daft adolescents to suspicious old bruisers. And when we take the old dog on her daily walk, we hear them thrashing about in the tinder-dry undergrowth on either side of the track. Our neighbours advise taking a stick with us at this time of year, to fend off an attack, but

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 26 October 2017

Meeting halfway Sir: If our Brexit negotiator David Davis has not read Robert Tombs’s wonderful article ‘Lost in translation’ (21 October) on how different the French and the British can be when it comes to the negotiating table, he really should, as it splendidly exemplifies how useful history can be. The trouble is, of course, that politicians are often too busy to read history, or that historians get round to writing something useful too late to exert practical influence. In this instance, however, there is still time: manufactured deadlines can be adjusted, and (given adequate cross-cultural empathy) accommodations can be reached. Brian Harrison Oxford The law in France Sir: Robert

Jonathan Mirsky

BBC4’s The Vietnam War was unique, informative and shattering

The Vietnam War BBC4 The BBC should be praised for showing all ten episodes of this unique, informative and shattering American series on the Vietnamese war, despite screening eight fewer hours than in the original. Before each episode the BBC warned that ‘some viewers may find some scenes upsetting’. Which ones? A frog jumping in a pool of blood from the head of a dead Vietcong (NLF) fighter? The Saigon police chief shooting a prisoner in the head? The American colonel offering a case of whiskey to the first man to bring him the severed head of an enemy soldier? Which he gets. The eager US soldier on his first day in Vietnam noticing strings of

Thursday

Robert Tombs

Lost in translation | 19 October 2017

If Michel Barnier and David Davis, in their regular dialogue of the deaf, seem to be inhabiting different mental universes, that is because they are. The British and French have often found each other particularly difficult to negotiate with. Of course, Barnier represents not France but the EU, and he has a negotiating position, the notorious European Council Guidelines, on which the veteran British diplomat Sir Peter Marshall has recently commented that ‘I have never seen, nor heard tell of, a text as antipathetic to the principle of give and take which is generally assumed to be at the heart of negotiation among like-minded democracies’. But, as a senior German

Thursday

Paul Levy

Alice’s restaurant

Though Alice Waters is not a household name here, that is precisely what she is in America — the best-known celebrity cook, the person who inspired the planting of Michelle Obama’s White House vegetable garden, the recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the Légion d’Honneur, vice-president of Slow Food International, the founding figure of California cuisine. She is the mentor of Sally Clarke and, claims Wikipedia, of René Redzepi and Yotam Ottolenghi. It all began in 1971 with a simple French restaurant in Berkeley, California, which she called Chez Panisse in homage to the films of Marcel Pagnol. It served a no-choice menu, costing $3.95, consisting of the traditional dishes

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 31 August 2017

I arrived for lunch a bit late and was led to the dining table. Our hostess disappeared back into the house to bring out the food, leaving me to acquaint myself with the other guests, an Englishwoman and an American. The Englishwoman said that yesterday she had fallen off the wagon after eight weeks and today she was terribly hung over. She didn’t feel guilty, however, because she had enjoyed herself very much. The American man’s eyes were hidden behind sunglasses but he had a warm smile and great teeth and an easy, open manner. He introduced himself by saying that this was his first time in France, and that

Matthew Lynn

Macron’s biggest enemy is himself – not the unions

The labour market would be revolutionised. France would start growing rapidly again, leading the way in Europe. Tech entrepreneurs would flock to Paris, along with the bankers fleeing the City, while companies from around the world would be relocating to newly invigorated industrial hubs in Lyon and Toulouse. That anyway was the script when the centrist reformer Emmanuel Macron was elected to the French Presidency. Today we saw what the Macron revolution would actually amount to as his government finally unveiled his major set of labour market reforms. Predictably enough the major trade unions have already said they will oppose it, and the riot police will no doubt be standing

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Hurricane Harvey is bigger news than the bankers at Jackson Hole

In Houston last November I spent an evening at the city’s industrial-scale food bank, where I heard a presentation on the Houstonian tradition of offering hospitality to refugees, including 200,000 displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. We were also given some positive spin on the strength of co-operation, in time of crisis, between the region’s major oil companies and its state and city governments. Now Houston itself is the victim of Hurricane Harvey. With the prospect of $50 billion worth of damage, the world is watching first to see whether the combined response is more humane and effective than the Katrina shambles, in which protection of property seemed to

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

The truth about Brexit? One professor’s guess is no better than another’s

Removing all trade and tariff barriers as part of a hard Brexit would generate ‘a £135 billion annual boost to the UK economy’, according to Professor Patrick Minford on behalf of Economists for Free Trade — while those who claim his ideas spell economic suicide are ‘hired hands, they work for government, they work for big industry…’ Well maybe, as I frequently say: Minford talks of a 4 per cent GDP gain from free trade, 2 per cent from ‘improved regulation’ and more from reclaiming our net EU budget contribution and ‘removing the taxpayer subsidy to unskilled immigration’. All of which adds up to much more, for example, than the

Francis Wheen

Swine fever

‘Rightly is they called pigs,’ says a farmworker in Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow as he watches porkers grunt and squelch. Pía Spry-Marqués has no time for such nominative determinism. ‘Pigs,’ she points out, ‘are in fact quite clean animals.’ Wallowing in mud isn’t nostalgie de la boue, merely the only way of keeping cool if no shade or fresh water is available. God disagrees with her. ‘The swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you,’ he tells Moses and Aaron in Leviticus. While most Muslims and Jews still go along with this (as do Rastafarians, much to the

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

Why western women are now the Islamists’ target of choice

There has been an unprecedented development this year in the Islamists’ war on the West. For the first time their foot soldiers are singling out women to kill. Women have been the victims of terrorism before, murdered by paramilitary organisations such as ETA, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the IRA, because of their uniform or their beliefs, or simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but never solely because of their sex. In the era when Islamic terror groups hijacked aircraft it was rare that women were harmed. When a Trans World Airlines jet was hijacked in 1985, for example, the terrorists released all the women

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s terror threat hasn’t gone away

The latest attack in France couldn’t have come at a worse time for the government. On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and his ministers dined at the Élysée Palace as the guests of their president, a “moment of conviviality” before they all head off on holidays today. It’s been a trying few weeks for them, what with Emmanuel Macron’s plummeting popularity amid a series of PR disasters for his inexperienced En Marche! party and a spot of R&R is just what everyone needs. Instead, this morning brought news of yet another outrage in the French capital. Fortunately, casualties were light. Of the six soldiers struck by a BMW outside their barracks in