Gavin Mortimer

France’s Covid stoicism has put Britain to shame

9 June 2021 8:51 pm

I feel like a teenager again. Tonight I’m allowed out until 11pm. What’s more, I’m permitted to go inside my…

Macron fiddles as France burns

29 May 2021 3:50 pm

In May 2017 Emmanuel Macron struck a regal pose as he strode across the esplanade of the Louvre to address…

The BBC’s shameful smearing of the French police

21 May 2021 10:27 pm

I had my first jab on Wednesday, at a vaccination centre in the south of Paris, run by the fire…

Why French soldiers are moving against Macron

10 May 2021 7:04 pm

Emmanuel Macron was in Strasbourg on Sunday where he addressed the Conference on the Future of Europe. This is where…

Is France losing its war on terror?

28 April 2021 4:44 pm

A political storm has swept France in recent days. It follows the publication of an open letter by twenty retired…

The banalisation of Islamist terror bodes badly for the West

25 April 2021 7:54 pm

Another day, another Islamist murder in France – this time, a 49-year-old policewoman fatally stabbed in the neck by a…

Starmer's Labour is following the French Socialists into oblivion

9 April 2021 6:27 pm

Why does Keir Starmer seem set on following the example of the French Socialist party, and leading Labour into electoral…

Is the US to blame for the far-left takeover of France's universities?

19 March 2021 10:46 pm

There is a belief in some quarters of the Anglosphere that the French are too wise to succumb to what…

Macron is using Islam to outmanoeuvre Le Pen

17 February 2021 6:00 pm

There was a rally in Paris on Sunday at which a couple of hundred protestors vented their anger at the…

The rise of Florian Philippot, France’s answer to Nigel Farage

13 February 2021 12:05 am

These are dispiriting times for France. The 6pm curfew and the closure of bistros and theatres have taken all the…

Europe’s cowardly response to terror

7 November 2020 7:00 pm

It says much about the endemic moral cowardice of Europe that Emmanuel Macron is being hailed as the saviour of…

France is under attack because of its culture, not its cartoons

3 November 2020 3:47 am

Let us imagine for a moment that Emmanuel Macron takes the advice of many in the Anglophone world and bans…

Macron's France is fearful and angry

31 October 2020 4:19 am

On Thursday morning, I visited the cathedral at Reims. The central door on the north side is dedicated to Saint…

The empty rhetoric of ‘je suis Samuel’

19 October 2020 7:28 pm

The mother of my daughter didn’t attend yesterday’s rally in Paris to honour the memory of Samuel Paty, the teacher…

Macron's fight with the far-left over extremism

7 October 2020 10:05 pm

Emmanuel Macron’s bold declaration last Friday that the Republic will eradicate Islamic extremism appeared to draw a swift response in…

Is Britain a nation in fear of safetyism?

7 September 2020 5:26 pm

It should come as no surprise that Britain’s city centres remain, in the words of CBI chief Carolyn Fairbairn, ‘ghost…

France is fighting a lone battle for free speech in the West

4 September 2020 8:37 pm

One of the most craven moments in the recent history of the British media was an interview Sky News conducted…

France has partly seen sense on face masks

28 August 2020 8:34 pm

I went for a long walk last night in Paris. I chuntered most of the way, only breaking off to…

World Rugby's trans women ban is a wise idea

26 August 2020 7:42 pm

By the time I was 15, I had put two rugby players in hospital. I broke the arm of one…

Why face masks weren’t compulsory during WW2

15 July 2020 6:42 pm

Britain has been here before when it comes to furores about face masks. Exactly 80 years ago the same argument…

Churchill once challenged BBC intolerance

19 June 2020 5:17 pm

Winston Churchill: hero or villain? That was the question the BBC asked on its website on 10 June. It caused…

Britain could learn from France's coronavirus approach

11 May 2020 7:24 pm

If there is a God, He’s not French. Last night I was on the balcony of my apartment in Paris…

Emmanuel Macron is experiencing the calm before the storm

1 May 2020 5:12 pm

Today marks the third month of my confinement in my fifth floor apartment in Paris. As I wrote all those…

Paris’s banlieues are burning once again

22 April 2020 6:24 pm

One of the persistent misconceptions of the riots that swept through France in the autumn of 2005 is that they…

France won't be fooled by Macron's radical reinvention

15 April 2020 7:25 pm

A couple of hours before Emmanuel Macron addressed France on Sunday night I received a meme on WhatsApp from a…