France

Le Pen is still the biggest winner in France’s elections

8 July 2024 8:06 pm

Ignore most snap verdicts from last night – the big winner in the French parliamentary election was still Marine Le…

How Marine Le Pen rebranded herself

7 July 2024 5:13 pm

Marine Le Pen was called a ‘bitch’ this week and threatened with sexual violence. It’s what passes for rap music…

My nights with the eagle owls

6 July 2024 9:00 am

Provence Summer has arrived. The evenings are warm enough to sit out on the balcony terrace and watch the lights…

Let’s start the new era with a glass of champagne

6 July 2024 9:00 am

‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad,’ Madame Lily Bollinger (1899-1977) remarked. ‘Sometimes I drink it when…

What the National Rally means for France’s foreign policy

6 July 2024 9:00 am

The electoral turmoil in France threatens its status as a world power. Friendly nations are despairing; rivals and enemies are…

Macron’s power in Europe is draining

29 June 2024 4:33 pm

In Brussels over the last two days EU heads of state and government have been carving up the ‘top jobs’.…

France’s ‘Somewheres’ want revenge

29 June 2024 9:00 am

The builder who has been working on my house in Burgundy will be voting for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally…

The shooting of Nahel Merzouk still haunts France

27 June 2024 8:07 pm

One year ago today, a 17-year-old called Nahel Merzouk was fatally shot by a policeman as he sped away from…

Starmer and Le Pen’s similarities

22 June 2024 9:00 am

Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap election in France is turning out to be a blunder of Sunakian proportions.…

Meet the musicians trying to revive French-language pop

22 June 2024 9:00 am

The other day, I went to see a nouveau riot-girl band called Claire Dance play in a disused factory in…

France under Macron keeps getting worse

22 June 2024 12:49 am

The warnings continue to come thick and fast in France about the disaster that could befall the Republic on 7…

Is France’s left-wing coalition more dangerous than Le Pen?

17 June 2024 12:24 am

French and international media cannot break their fixation with the ‘extreme right’. They continue to target the Rassemblement National (RN)…

My dreams of Jeremy Clarke

15 June 2024 9:00 am

The other week my eldest daughter and I were staying with friends in Richmond for the launch of Jeremy’s third…

How Miss La La captured Degas’s imagination

15 June 2024 9:00 am

‘Can you come Saturday morning to my studio, 19 bis rue Fontaine?’ Degas wrote to Edmond de Goncourt in 1879.…

The 28-year-old who legitimised Marine Le Pen

8 June 2024 9:00 am

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally – formerly the National Front – is expected to triumph for a third time running…

Second life: Playboy, by Constance Debré, reviewed

8 June 2024 9:00 am

Having abandoned her marriage and her career as a lawyer, Debré re-emerges as a lesbian, a writer, and a seducer equal to Casanova

Who will my wife marry next?

1 June 2024 9:00 am

Since I had a brush with death a couple of years ago, I have often wondered who my far younger…

Why are French politicians obsessed with world war two?

30 May 2024 3:16 am

War talk is all the rage in France. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza are often cited, but the war…

France has become Europe’s Wild West

27 May 2024 9:16 pm

New Caledonia must not become the ‘Wild West’ declared Emmanuel Macron last week during his flying visit to the Pacific…

Must Paris reinvent itself?

27 April 2024 9:00 am

The beautifully preserved, elitist metropolis now looks increasingly out of step with neighbouring capitals and may be forced to become more multicultural

Germanophobia is growing in France

13 April 2024 6:30 pm

There was a time earlier this century when few politicians in France would dare criticise Germany. The country was the…

Letters: the real problem with a Labour super-majority

13 April 2024 9:00 am

Good trade-off Sir: I applaud your excellent editorial (‘Trading in Falsehoods’, 6 April) – a succinct and insightful essay on…

Macron vs Putin: this summer’s Olympic battle

13 April 2024 9:00 am

Dixmont, Yonne Last summer, Emmanuel Macron lashed out at France’s constitution because it prevents him from running for a third…

Adrift on the Canadian frontier: The Voyageur, by Paul Carlucci, reviewed

13 April 2024 9:00 am

Based on the 19th-century ‘voyageur’ Alexis de Martin, Carlucci’s young protagonist is befriended by kindly strangers. But what are their true motives?