Patrick Marnham

The trial of Marshal Pétain continues to haunt France to this day

17 June 2023 9:00 am

Was one venal old man primarily responsible for France’s catastrophe of 1940-44, or was it a case of collective failure? The question remains unanswered, says Patrick Marnham

When Paris was the only place to be

15 August 2020 9:00 am

For more than 100 years Paris has been as much a symbol and a myth as a geographical reality. The…

France’s new right

26 November 2016 9:00 am

The result in France in the first round of the Les Républicains party’s primary elections marks the political death of…

François Hollande has found a shameful saviour

28 May 2016 9:00 am

France’s president is looking more hopeless than ever. But French politics is such a mess that he’ll probably survive

The city’s beauty has often been described as ‘melancholic’, ‘sinister’ or ‘dreamlike’

‘The finest architectural delusion in the world’

14 May 2016 9:00 am

It took the madness of genius to build such a wonderful impossibility. Patrick Marnham reviews a delightful new literary guide to Venice

Children in the bidonville du Chemin du Cornillon, Saint-Denis, 1963. (From Luc Sante’s The Other Paris)

Paris: a beautiful, damned city

13 February 2016 9:00 am

The much-lamented journalist and bon viveur Sam White, late of the rue du Bac, The Spectator and the Evening Standard,…

François Hollande’s own personal state of emergency

6 February 2016 9:00 am

His response to the Paris terror attacks has left the French president increasingly isolated and unpopular

Meet the intellectuals leading France to the right

29 October 2015 9:00 am

The nation’s intellectuals are being roiled by issues of immigration, sovereignty and freedom of expression

France’s divided centre-right must delight Marine Le Pen

12 September 2015 9:00 am

The leaders of the Républicains avoid Le Pen’s coarse language, but many offer similar immigration policies

Members of the Maquis study the mechanism and maintenance of weapons dropped by parachute in the Haute-Loire

The facts behind France’s most potent modern myth

29 August 2015 9:00 am

Patrick Marnham unravels some of the powerful, often conflicting myths surrounding the French Resistance

Kamal Daoud (Photo: Getty)

The Outsider — from the viewpoint of the victim’s family

11 July 2015 9:00 am

In 1975 the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, in a lecture at the University of Massachusetts, identified Joseph Conrad’s Heart of…

Is Nicolas Sarkozy headed back to the Elysée – or to jail?

29 November 2014 9:00 am

Destiny is calling Nicolas Sarkozy. But it’s not clear whether he’s heading back to the Elysée – or to jail

Némirovsky's love letter to the France that spurned her and killed her

15 November 2014 9:00 am

By 1940 Irène Némirovsky, who had arrived in France at the age of 16 as a refugee from Kiev, had…

Georges Simenon aged 30 (left) and Jean Gabin (right) in the 1958 film Maigret Tend un Piège — to be shown as part of a season of Maigret films at the Barbican, London (4–26 October). For details visit www.barbican.org.uk.

A salute to Georges Simenon

20 September 2014 9:00 am

The full series of the Maigret novels, together with some of the romans durs, are being republished by Penguin Classics at a rate of one per month. Patrick Marnham salutes a magnificent long-term project.

France's political system is crumbling. What's coming next looks scary

7 June 2014 9:00 am

The desperate state of its politics seems to signal the end of the Republic

Silvia Pinal in Buñuel’s Viridiana

There was good art under Franco

12 April 2014 9:00 am

Everyone knows about the Spanish civil war, first battlefield in the struggle that broke out in 1936 and ended nine…

When we dropped the Bomb by mistake

14 December 2013 9:00 am

In January 1976 New York’s late-lamented National Lampoon produced a bicentennial calendar as a contribution to the general rejoicing. For…