France

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer

The truth about the French drownings

From our UK edition

More than 90 people drowned in France between 19 June and the end of the month during the country’s intense heatwave. Government figures released last week were accompanied by a warning from sport and youth minister Marina Ferrari. ‘Very young children are particularly vulnerable and must not be left unsupervised,’ she said. ‘There are young people engaging in dangerous behaviour, such as “I’m going to jump off a bridge” or “I’m going into an unsupervised canal”.’ Such antics were de rigueur during the heatwave, particularly in cities such as Paris, where people cooled off by leaping from bridges into rivers and canals. In the Canal Saint-Martin, in the heart of the capital, two young men drowned in separate incidents.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

Why is Giorgia Meloni courting Emmanuel Macron?

From our UK edition

Emmanuel Macron has lost a friend in Keir Starmer. The French President paid tribute to the outgoing British Prime Minister last week, describing him as a man of ‘dignity, decency and courage’. When one door closes another one opens, and while Starmer was organising the removal vans, Macron was welcoming Giorgia Meloni to the Côte d’Azur. Last week’s Franco-Italian summit was the first of its kind since 2020; Meloni was elected prime minister two years later. For Macron, she posed a threat to European ‘values’ because her party had its roots in postwar fascism Her victory did not go down well with Macron and his centrist government.

Martin Vander Weyer

Storm warnings for Burnham from the weathermen of Basel

From our UK edition

Reading the annual economic report of the Bank for International Settlements while lying beside a pool with an Aperol spritz in hand is a challenge I accepted on your behalf. Based in Basel as a hub for the world’s central banks, BIS is always careful in its prose for fear of setting cats among global pigeons. But this year’s bulletin is a serious storm warning, based on four factors that in a worst-case combination could trigger market mayhem. First, inflation driven by Middle East conflict has left oil market imbalances that will take ‘several quarters to purge’, with the risk of further volatility; BIS doesn’t actually say ‘If Trump goes batshit crazier’, but that’s the subtext.

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s ideological war on air conditioning

America is to blame for the heatwave that has caused so much misery in France in the last fortnight. Audrey Pulvar, the Socialist deputy mayor of Paris, took to social media at the weekend, addressing a letter to "dear American journalists" who have been making fun of Paris because the city doesn’t have air conditioning. "This is so rich!” exclaimed Pulvar. "You bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing. Your cities, which are 90 percent air conditioned, are not unrelated to this." It sounds like Madame Pulvar is a little hot and bothered, which isn’t surprising given the furnace that France has become. In Chablis, a little south of where I live in Burgundy, the temperature hit 41.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

The French love affair with Scotland

France’s summer smash at the cinema is set to be a comedy called The Perfects. It opens next week with an all-star cast that includes Scottish actor Alan Cumming. The Perfects are a family of con-artists who flee France to escape the police and they end up in Scotland where madcap adventures in tartan ensue. It’s further proof that France can’t get enough of Bonnie Scotland. Films, television documentaries, newspaper features and even a puff piece earlier this month on the primetime lunchtime news about a visit to the most isolated pub in Scotland.  Billy Connolly once famously likened Scottish folk singers to ‘singing shortbread tins," churning out clichéd lyrics about mountains, heather and a Roamin' in the Gloamin.’ "Garbage!

scotland
Gavin Mortimer

Britain is the weak man of Europe on border control

Britain and France have rewritten the "one in, one out" migrant deal nearly a year after it came into effect. The treaty, described as "groundbreaking" by both countries last summer, has struggled to stem the numbers of migrants heading from France to England in small boats. It soon became apparent that the deal contained a loophole that enabled a handful of deported migrants to return to Britain in the back of a lorry. Britain's Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has agreed with her French counterpart, Laurent Nuñez, to close this loophole by tweaking the treaty to stipulate that its terms apply to any returning migrant regardless of whether they enter a second time by boat or by vehicle.

Lee Langley

Nagging doubts: Twenty Minutes of Silence, by Hélène Bessette, reviewed

From our UK edition

One critic memorably described Waiting for Godot as a play in which nothing happens, twice. Twenty Minutes of Silence is a novel in which something happens, repeatedly. Ina luxurious villa in northern France a man lies dead, surrounded by disorder – apparently a robbery gone wrong. When the police arrive, they find he was shot with his own gun and the murder weapon is missing. His wife and 15-year-old son become suspects. What is really going on here? Again and again we are taken through the night’s events, starting afresh each time. The dead man was a multi-millionaire with dubious associates. The marriage relationship seems ambiguous: the wife could have been deceived or unfaithful.

Friday

Christopher Sandford

How California disrupted the French wine industry

Much as I love France, who sold us the idea of superior French taste in the first place? Why do we continue to beat ourselves up about their supposedly ultra-cool cinema, peerless fashion sense and exquisite food and drink? Has anyone contemplating the pool of congealing demi-glace set before them at a standard-issue Paris café been able to maintain any delusion of French grandeur? As it happens, a significant blow to French national pride in these matters came almost exactly 50 years ago, at the Paris Intercontinental Hotel, where, in a blind tasting watched over by the world’s media, ten of the host country’s best vintages were set in contest against upstarts from California.

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Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s migration crisis will outlast Emmanuel Macron

France has maxed out on migrants. It’s a message that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party has been pushing for years, but it’s one now endorsed by the government’s Justice Minister. In an interview with a newspaper at the weekend, Gérald Darmanin declared that the Republic has "reached the limits of our capacities for integration and assimilation." Darmanin believes that a three-year suspension of legal immigration is the answer, and in particular he wants a crackdown on the policy of family reunification. Introduced in 1976, the policy allowed migrants – mainly from North Africa – who came to France to work to also bring their family. "We must put an end to immigration as it exists today," said Darmanin.

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Catriona Olding

Reading Jeremy’s words only gets harder

From our UK edition

Provence In the hope of renting out the main cave house during the summer, I’ve been clearing to make room for guests. At the bottom of a cupboard I found two of Jeremy’s Barbour jackets. He bought them compulsively in secondhand shops and I’ve given away three already. Standing at the clothes recycling bin in the car park, I remembered just in time to check the pockets. With Jeremy you never know what you’ll find. The other month, rooting about for scissors in his as yet uncleared bedside cabinet drawer, I found a sizeable lump of granite-hard hash which must have been at least six years old. My hippy ceramicist neighbour Geoffrey was delighted.

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

Was Macron slapped because of this Iranian actress?

It was the slap that shook the world. Not so much from shock but laughter, as cameras caught the Macrons having a domestic on an international flight. A book published this week in France claims that Brigitte slapped her husband after discovering "a steamy message" on Emmanuel’s phone sent by an actress. According to Un Couple (Presque) Parfait, ‘Slapgate’ wasn’t the first time Brigitte had to bring her husband to heel over a woman The books says the sender was Iranian-born Golshifteh Farahani, who came to prominence in 2008 when she starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the Ridley Scott film, Body of Lies. Brigitte allegedly found the message as the presidential jet landed at Hanoi airport in May last year.

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Wednesday

Melissa Kite

What do the French see in Ireland?

From our UK edition

As the eco-tourism season got under way, the confused-looking French people began to arrive. They come to see ‘la nature’, and they insist they don’t mind about the rain or the terrible food, or the fact you can’t actually access any of this nature because it’s all owned by strapping great Cork farmers who won’t let you near it. After a few days, their faces suggest they’re getting a tad disorientated, but they don’t want to admit it. First there arrived a very nice couple from a town in northern France where the builder boyfriend and I had one of our most memorable holidays together. As I served them their breakfast coffee, they asked where they could go for a walk, for they had tried in vain for days.

France misinformation
Gavin Mortimer

France is throwing a tantrum at Trump

France is intensifying its counter-offensive against what it calls misinformation. Earlier this month, Paris prosecutors confirmed they have opened a criminal investigation into Elon Musk and X. Musk had ignored a summons to appear for a voluntary interview on April 20. The French state requested Musk assist in an investigation into algorithmic manipulation and the spread of AI deepfakes on X. Musk responded to the criminal investigation by labeling the prosecutors “faker than a chocolate euro and queerer than a pink flamingo in a neon tutu!” On the same day, Paris unveiled its “French Response” strategy. The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, posted a video on X (where else?

Wednesday

Catriona Olding

People who say it’s no good throwing money at a problem have never been poor

From our UK edition

It started during the bus journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh airport on the way home to Provence. Saying goodbye is always sad but there were other worries; earnings have been minimal for the past ten months and the new hot water tank was costing more than the balance of my bank account. People who assert that it’s no good throwing money at a problem have either never been poor or had an unhappy teenage daughter. In the old days when I had a bit of cash and one of the girls was especially miserable, a chat in the car and a wee spin round Topshop or Urban Outfitters generally did wonders. Those days are gone. I’ve been a financial basket case for years now.

Monday

Matthew Fraser

What happened to Provence?

The best time to visit Provence, I always advise when asked, is in the spring before the scorching heat and summer crowds. I have been spending time in the south of France since the early 1990s. Provence was fashionable in those days. Peter Mayle’s massively successful book, A Year in Provence, inspired thousands to pull up stakes and move to southern France to emulate his idyllic life in the Luberon hills. Some settled farther west in the Dordogne, famously called "Dordogneshire" for its concentration of British expats. Mayle became a one-man publishing industry, following up with sequels including Toujours Provence and Encore Provence. Thirty years ago, I stayed with friends who owned a renovated farmhouse with a spectacular view of the Dentelles de Montmirail.

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer

Bardella, the princess and a very French love story

Princess Maria Carolina de Bourbon des Deux-Siciles isn’t a name that rolls off the tongue – but it’s now on the lips of every socialite and political pundit in France. The 22-year-old Italian aristocrat, who is the elder daughter of the Duke of Castro, was splashed across the cover of gossip magazine Paris Match last week, gazing into the eyes of her new beau. Was he notable for being a duke, a prince or another such member of the hereditary elite? Not at all. The suitor in question was Jordan Bardella: the right-wing powerhouse whom polls suggest will succeed Emmanuel Macron as French president next year.  In an interview with Hello! in 2024, Maria Carolina declared she was ‘still waiting for Prince Charming to come and serenade me with a guitar and a red rose’.

Wednesday

Ben Judah

De Gaulle or nothing: lessons from the General

From our UK edition

The first time I set foot in the White House as a Labour political adviser, in spring 2024, to see a then all-powerful Jake Sullivan as the US National Security Adviser, I went as an Atlanticist. By my final visit to the West Wing in January, accompanying David Lammy as his aide to see J.D. Vance, I was an Anglo-Gaullist. In between lay the humiliation of Chagos, twists and turns over Ukraine, surprise American strikes on Iran and the realisation that our closest ally, the superpower we had built our entire security around, had become erratic, emotional and unpredictable. When Labour came to power, I truly believed the country had been suffering mainly from Tory problems. I learnt the hard way that our instability stemmed mostly from British problems. And this brought me to Gaullism.

Martin Vander Weyer

Making Tax Difficult: another Whitehall farce

From our UK edition

Welcome to the new tax year, with its overflowing hamper of half-baked, growth-eating, enterprise-crushing Labour measures. And if you happen to be one of the 4.4 million self-employed who scrape an independent living despite rising costs and red tape, welcome to what must surely be one of Whitehall’s longest-running but least funny sitcoms, Making Tax Digital (MTD). If your income from self-employment (or rents as a landlord) exceeds £50,000 a year, you must henceforth submit quarterly digital updates to HMRC; next year the threshold will drop to £20,000. You’ll have less time to pursue your trade but your costs will rise, because you’ll need new software and more professional advice.

Tuesday

Catriona Olding

The joy of meeting ‘randomers’

From our UK edition

Provence Life was complicated when I fled to Provence in November 2014 with no job and very little money. At first a comedian friend and his wife lent me their second home. The intention was to stay for six months, recover from a traumatic marriage break-up and write a book about my father, who was a giant (7ft 4in) and had for a spell in 1938 toured Nazi Germany and England as part of a world-famous revue. I was also planning to learn copy-editing in the hope that when I got back, I could get a job as the oldest-ever publishing intern. But in those days I didn’t even have a laptop and since money was running out, I had to abandon both ideas and find work.

Tuesday

Joshua S. Treviño

Iran and the crisis in the European mind

The politics of the Iranian war feature an observable gap between interest and action for nearly all parties. The Americans possessed overwhelming casus belli versus Iran for nearly half a century, and did not act upon it until three weeks past. The Iranians possessed none against America for just as long, but exerted themselves with religious fanaticism to bring this war upon themselves. The Arab autocracies of the Persian-Gulf region find themselves under direct attack from the Iranians, but do not respond in kind. The Chinese observe a core strategic proxy and key commodities supplier taken off the chessboard – for the second time in under 90 days – and refrain from direct engagement.

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