France
Let’s start the new era with a glass of champagne
‘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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
‘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
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
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?
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?
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
New Caledonia must not become the ‘Wild West’ declared Emmanuel Macron last week during his flying visit to the Pacific…
Germanophobia is growing in France
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
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
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
Based on the 19th-century ‘voyageur’ Alexis de Martin, Carlucci’s young protagonist is befriended by kindly strangers. But what are their true motives?
What we owe to the self-taught genius Carl Linnaeus
Bumptious, uncouth and the despair of his schoolmasters, Linnaeus died almost forgotten. Yet he established a system of taxonomy that we still use two centuries later
The plot to bring down Emmanuel Macron
Last week Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the Olympic aquatic centre that will host the swimming and diving events at this summer’s…
Why Thames Water is the pariah of post-privatisation capitalism
‘It would have been ideal not to have so much poo in the water,’ said Oxford captain Leonard Jenkins after…
Must Paris reinvent itself?
Muriel Zagha 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