France
Has Provence cured my cancer?
During the past three years I have spent quite a bit of time in a rented house in Provence. Volets…
Jeremy Clarke: The power of ‘Bonjour’
In France, or in Provence at least, polite rule number one is to say hello. You must offer a distinct…
Jeremy Clarke: How I lost an afternoon to two magnums of mid-range champagne
As I stood there, I was reminded of the man of no fixed abode who, several years back, aged 68,…
The heart is unstirred in Haneke’s morose critique of a fractured society: Happy End reviewed
The films of Michael Haneke wear a long face. Psychological terror, domestic horror, sick sex, genital self-harm — these are…
The perils of the boar-hunting season
The French countryside around here is teeming with wild boar. They visit the shack at night to eat the pansies…
Letters
Meeting halfway Sir: If our Brexit negotiator David Davis has not read Robert Tombs’s wonderful article ‘Lost in translation’ (21…
Lost in translation
If Michel Barnier and David Davis, in their regular dialogue of the deaf, seem to be inhabiting different mental universes,…
Alice’s restaurant
Though Alice Waters is not a household name here, that is precisely what she is in America — the best-known…
Low life
I arrived for lunch a bit late and was led to the dining table. Our hostess disappeared back into the…
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…
Swine fever
‘Rightly is they called pigs,’ says a farmworker in Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow as he watches porkers grunt and squelch.…
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…
Low life
Five and the Red One are a German covers band. It’s probably the most uninspiring name for a rock band…
Is Macron’s vanity presidency already falling apart?
The French president’s embarrassing attempts to reinvent himself as the new Tony Blair are not working
Low life
The hen party was seated at an outside restaurant table under the plane trees when I arrived. They sat with…
Diary
A trip to the supermarché at the beginning of our French month yielded many of the necessary things one also…
Cathar country
I once spent three months living in the Languedoc, writing my first novel. The highlight was the few days I…
France’s new right
The result in France in the first round of the Les Républicains party’s primary elections marks the political death of…
France is now the sick man of Europe
It is a long time since the term ‘sick man of Europe’ could be applied to Britain. France is now…
Hollande equals Thatcher? If only
Have you ever tried discussing the merits of gun control with a Texan, or of deregulated labour markets with a…
Three hours of vomit, fellatio and menstruation: Isabelle Huppert on Phaedra(s)
A blushing James Woodall is riveted by Isabelle Huppert’s performance in Phaedra(s)
Zopiclone: drug of choice for monkeys and the French
Hours before boarding the cross-Channel car ferry, I received a text message from the company warning of severe fuel shortages…
François Hollande has found a shameful saviour
France’s president is looking more hopeless than ever. But French politics is such a mess that he’ll probably survive
The French gym where kissing before a workout is mandatory
A fresh start in a new gym in a foreign country. The serious young gym attendant didn’t speak a word…
This Parisian exhibition has rewritten the story of art
Why do we put one work of art beside another? For the most part museums and galleries tend to stick…
