Low life
French gambling is a mystery to me
Feeling oddly confident, clairvoyant even, I entered a bar to place a bet on Sunday’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.…
Is my phobia of upmarket restaurants misplaced?
Scotching my bright idea of a stiff gin for Dutch courage in the bar across the road, Catriona bounded straight…
Why French car-boot sales are good for my mental health
Hairpin bends in a stony forest. Downhill. Steep, then steeper. Smooth frictionless tarmac. I’ve got the car barely under control.…
The pleasures — and pain — of dog-walking
The old dog was in a companionable frame of mind and she trotted along at my side, glancing up now…
The A272 is a relic of the golden age of motoring
In France I own a dented old Mercedes and in England a dented old Mitsubishi Carina. The Mercedes is parked…
How to seduce a Border Force officer
There was only a handful of us arriving at Bristol on flight 6114 from Nice. Oscar and I had the…
Bad news from my oncologist didn’t spoil my joyous reunion with my grandson
The Moulinards had inhabited the old stone hilltop house for centuries, ekeing out a hard living among the sun-baked boulders.…
Would this Marseille-bound flight be the death of me?
‘There’s no need to wipe down your tray table,’ screeched Heidi, chief steward of the ‘amazing team you have looking…
A lament for the foreign correspondent’s house – and his hospitality
Provence-Alpes-Côte D’Azur Until January the foreign correspondent lived in a late-18th-century house with a vineyard, olive grove and vegetable garden…
How to survive a heatwave
Provence-Alpes-Côte D’Azur A burning ball appears over the brow of the hill at seven o’clock every morning and then…
Jam and Opium on the Somme
Phone calls aside, the only human contact I had on my ten-day Somme battlefield tour was with the lady who…
The beauty of military cemeteries
They are starting to cut the corn. But apart from combine harvesters and tractors, the roads up here on the…
My Great War obsession
Bernafay Wood B&B, Somme, France I came up on the TGV yesterday from the Midi to northern France and it…
Nuns, a maquisard and the Devil’s Own Rum: a Provençale pilgrimage
Avid Spectator reader Mr Brown had endured the very strictest of lockdowns for family health reasons in Tunbridge Wells. Since…
What angry young French men want
Chatting on the café terrace with my new friends Didier and Emile made me aware that certain political ideas, which…
Is left the new right?
I took a table on the terrace of the reopened bar and ordered une pression from the waitress. ‘Back to…
My hairdresser cured my depression
I walked to the salon in fiery sunshine. Gorgeous, zaftig Elody was wearing a short satin dressing gown of silver…
An 11-year-old’s birthday party was hijacked by Brexit
Saturday night we ate outside next to the floodlit rock face. Four adult guests came puffing up the path and…
We have a communist bar and a fascist bar. If only I could remember which is which
When I first came to this village, I was told that one of the bars was a ‘communist’ bar and…
Rules for a deconfinement dinner party
The most visible local landmark is a solitary two-headed Jurassic mountain called Le Bessillon, six miles long and 800 metres…
My first post-lockdown party
France is divided into a red zone and a green zone. We’re green. Green for go. From this morning we…
In praise of French doctors
They made a better job of sorting out my waterworks
How the French view their weekly clap for carers
Once a week we break French emergency law and have a friend round for drinks on the terrace. The terrace…
Vodka, kaolin and morphine: my welcome drinks at The Spectator offices
In 2001, aged 44, I was hired to write a weekly column for this august paper, and for the first…
Would my success in growing cannabis plants translate to nasturtiums?
In a cave once used as a stable and now abandoned, I found a wooden crate containing a dozen tiny…
