France

Tuesday

Cockburn

A poultry affair at the White House

The call sheet for this afternoon’s event at the White House was as imposing as ever: WHO: The President Mrs. Melania Trump, First Lady of the United States Gobble, Turkey Waddle, Turkey Putin at 10, turkeys at 12, home to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving by nightfall. A typical day in the Trump presidency. This year’s birds, Gobble and Waddle, hail from Wayne County, North Carolina, and will return to live out their days at North Carolina State University. Luckily they aren’t from Venezuela, else Pete Hegseth would have turned them into a cloud of red vapor and feathers already. Cockburn helped himself to a cup of hot apple cider from the White House staff and settled in at the back of the press area.

turkey

Tuesday

Dan Fox

Is this the end of the French croissant?

Occasionally, a French person reveals – without any malice or superciliousness – that they run on an alternative operating system from us Brits. And on an entirely different motherboard from our American cousins. Over the years of gathering supporting anecdotes, a surprising theme has emerged: butter. Take my first visit to Paris, more than 30 years ago. I innocently asked for butter with my croissant. Simple answer: “Non.” Naturally, I remonstrated. The waiter retorted: “A croissant eeez butter!” And, in fairness, he had a point. Upon biting into said viennoiserie, I had to concede: it was nothing like the dry grocery store versions I was used to. Moments later, a small pot of raspberry confiture was graciously placed on my table.

croissants
Gavin Mortimer

Did the Louvre robbers want to get caught?

It is more than a month since thieves stole the crown jewels from the Louvre and the chances of recovering the loot, worth an estimated €88 million, diminish with every passing day. The robbery was initially dubbed the “heist of the century,” a brazen theft in broad daylight as visitors strolled through the world’s most famous museum. There were up and down the ladder and in out of the museum in seven minutes, giving the impression that this was the work of villains well-versed in daring robberies. But soon details emerged that suggested the gang of four weren’t quite of the caliber of the thieves immortalized in the Hollywood movie Ocean’s Eleven.

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

A decade after Bataclan, France is more divided than ever

Ten years ago on Thursday, Islamist terrorists massacred 130 people in a coordinated attack across Paris. It was the heaviest loss of life on French soil since World War Two, and those who perished – as well as the 350 who were wounded – were remembered yesterday in a series of commemorations. Emmanuel Macron visited the six sites where the terrorists struck, among them the Stade de France and the Bataclan concert hall, and the President inaugurated a memorial garden at Place Saint-Gervais, opposite Paris City Hall. According to the Élysée Palace ahead of proceedings, the day would be an opportunity for the nation "to honor the memory of those who lost their lives... and reaffirm its ongoing commitment to the fight against terrorism.

bataclan

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Why is it only left-wing leaders who are allowed to be young?

There was a time when the French left turned its nose up at all things American. Too low-brow for them. Not now. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race has caused much joie de vivre in left-circles. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Gallic Bernie Saunders and the leader of the far-left La France Insoumise, described Mamdani's win as "very good news." The general secretary of the center-left Socialist party, Olivier Faure, posted a smiley face on X above a headline in Le Monde, hailing Mamdani as "the youngest mayor in New York history." Mamdani referenced his age during his victory speech in Brooklyn. "The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate," he proclaimed. "I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim.

young

Wednesday

Roger Kimball

What doesn’t kill Egly-Ouriet makes it stronger

In recent columns, we have visited some lesser known spots in Burgundy – Saint-Romain, Maranges, Ladoix – where the wines are good and the prices reassuring.  This time, I’d like to travel to Champagne to introduce you to one of my most exciting recent discoveries, the wines of Egly-Ouriet. You know about Dom Pérignon, Krug, Bollinger and Taittinger. They can be very good. Egly-Ouriet is something else. Remember that Champagne occupies the northernmost precinct of French wine production. The northeastern bit of the area borders Belgium. It’s chilly up there, and damp. Nietzsche famously declared that, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” That may not be true of people. I am pretty sure it is not. But the observation has a certain application to wine.

egly-ouriet

Monday

James Tidmarsh

Macron has declared war on free speech

Emmanuel Macron says Europeans should stop relying on social media for their news and turn back to traditional public media. Speaking in Paris on Wednesday, he said people were “completely wrong” to use social networks for information and should instead depend on journalists and established outlets. Social platforms, he argued, are driven by a ‘process of maximum excitement” designed to “maximize advertising revenue,” a system he said is “destroying the foundations of democratic debate.” He accused X of being “dominated by far-right content” and added that the platform was no longer neutral because its owner had “decided to take part in the democratic struggle and in the international reactionary movement.” TikTok, he warned, was no less dangerous.

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Why the French are dreaming of a Donald Trump à la française

A year ago Donald J Trump was still roundly disliked by the French commentariat. Even the conservative Le Figaro newspaper held its Gallic nose in disdain, running a haughty article headlined "Trump, vulgarity runs rampant." The left still loathe the president of the United States but for the right in France he has become a role model. The same Le Figaro now writes approvingly of Trump and admits it got him wrong. "We expected an isolationist Trump, focused solely on American interests," it declared on Friday. "But in nine months, the president has established himself as a peacemaker in multiple international crises." The French perhaps more than any European nation have never got The Donald.

Trump France

Saturday

Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s story has become a Shakespearean tragedy

This week has been a tale of two presidents. On the one hand there is Donald Trump, who has masterminded a peace deal between Israel and Hamas which, the world hopes, will end the conflict in Gaza. Even Trump’s long-standing detractors acknowledge his role in bringing the warring parties to the negotiating table. "Trump's unique style and crucial relationships with Israel and the Arab world appear to have contributed to this breakthrough," explained the BBC. It hasn’t been such a good week for Emmanuel Macron. On the contrary it’s been the most humiliating few days of his eight and a half years in office. On Monday his Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, tendered his resignation after 27 days in office. It was the shortest premiership in the 67 years of the Fifth Republic.

Macron

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer

What is Charles Kushner doing in Paris?

When Charles Kushner took up his appointment as American ambassador to France this summer, his first official visit was to the Shoah Memorial in Paris. As a child of Holocaust survivors, he tweeted, “fighting anti-Semitism will be at the heart of my mission.” So it has proved. Last month, Kushner published a letter in the Wall Street Journal in which he accused Emmanuel Macron of insufficient action in the face of soaring anti-Semitism in the Republic. The ambassador was summoned for a dressing down. He didn’t attend as he was on vacation Kushner also castigated the French President for his imminent recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Kushner

Sunday

Daniel J. Mahoney

Camus comes to America

The 20th-century French writer Albert Camus remains a living author, a permanent contemporary, in a way that the far more dogmatic and ideological Jean-Paul Sartre does not. The latter provided a caricature of “existentialism,” nihilism dressed up as absolute freedom, beholden to no limits and no enduring truths. In contrast, the author of The Stranger and The Plague rejected Sartre’s facile nihilism, as well as his repellant accommodation with murderous messianism, typically conveyed in fashionable leftist nostrums. The more hopeful side of Camus comes through in his recently re-released Travels in the Americas: Notes and Impressions of a New World.

camus

Monday

Freddy Gray

Candace Owens: on the Macron lawsuit, anti-Semitism and Trump

Candace Owens joined Freddy Gray on the Americano show last Friday to discuss her recent lawsuit with the Macrons, Trump's intervention, the Epstein Files and accusations of anti-Semitism. Here are some highlights from their conversation. Why did Macron and his wife sue Candace Owens? Freddy Gray: Candace is being sued or threatened with legal action by the Macrons, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, the President and First Lady of France. Because, Candace, you believe that Brigitte Macron is a man. Why do you think the Macrons are choosing to sue you? Candace Owens: Because they were trying to stop the story. I think it was an effective PR strategy.

Freddy Gray and Candace Owens on the Macron lawsuit

Wednesday

Cockburn

Why are the Macrons bothering to sue Candace Owens?

What's the best novel you've read all summer? For Cockburn it's the more than 200-page complaint that Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte filed in federal court today against Candace Owens, regarding several episodes that Owens has broadcast claiming that the First Lady of France was, in fact, born a man. Cockburn understands that Owens offered the Macrons the right of reply before airing the speculation, but the French President and his wife declined. This has led to a source close to Owens to claim to Cockburn that the suit is nothing more than “a foreign government trying to silence an independent American journalist.” And they’re not the only ones, pace Candace.

Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron at Downing Street (Getty) candace

Tuesday

Loyd Grossman

How to café hop like a Parisian

You will be familiar with the 1930s line, “Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun.” Whenever I hear the word culture I reach for the nearest restaurant. Culture makes me hungry and there is no better place to post-mortemize the latest exhibition or concert than from a comfortable seat in a local joint. For 19th-century progressives, railway stations were the most in-your-face examples of a new and better world. “The railway station is the highest monumental and artistic expression of the industrial and commercial genius which so specially characterizes the era in which we live,” César Daly proclaimed in 1861.

Café
zucchini
Dan Fox

My zucchini seedling scheme

Véronique arrives 45 minutes late, a vision of practiced nonchalance and rustic affectation in a loose-fitting linen smock dress, clutching a wicker basket suspiciously devoid of wear. She regards my zucchini seedlings with mild distrust and incredulity, the way the French eye giant Spanish strawberries when they first start appearing in the local supermarket. The plants’ robust stems and glossy leaves look almost too healthy, especially given their minuscule nursery pots. Something is amiss. “C’est bio, ça?” she asks, though her tone suggests this isn’t really a question –more an ideological verbal tic than a genuine inquiry into my choice of potting mix. “Ben oui!” I smile with the practiced ease of a man who has told this particular lie many times before.

Tuesday

George Young

The last bullfighters

In May of last year, at the Saturday corrida of the Feria de Pentecôte in Nîmes – “no hay billetes” – I had the traveler’s luck to find myself seated next to the son of one of the late, great French toreros of the 1970s. We were seated high in the Arènes de Nîmes, the city’s Roman amphitheater completed around 100 years after the Crucifixion – a structure far superior in function and beauty to Rome’s defunct and messily eviscerated Colosseum. In Nîmes, as in neighboring Arles, the French have triumphed over the Fall of Rome in restoring these structures to something of their original purpose: hosting feats of gladiatorial courage tamed by a strict protocol. But that inheritance has once more been threatened by legislation that contests its place in the Fifth Republic.

bullfighting

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

How the French left made Mamdani

It should come as no surprise that Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory in last week’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York was celebrated so vociferously by the French far left. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) regard the 33-year-old Socialist as a chip off the old block. In a post on X Mélenchon delighted in Mamdani’s defeat of Andrew Cuomo, saying: "Opposed to the genocide of the Palestinians, he is obviously already accused of anti-Semitism. He won against a figurehead of the centre-left backed by the local leaders of the cheating Democratic party." As in France, continued Mélenchon, the "traditional" left no longer speaks to the people; it is the radical left.

Melenchon

Tuesday

Dan Fox

How I flouted a cardinal French gardening rule

“C’est ma faute,” I called up to the local old boys as they strolled past my potager, chuckling among themselves. I tried to match their levity, but it was obviously affected; they could sense my panic. It was late-April and my garden resembled an eccentrically out-of-season Halloween scene, with tomato plants standing eerily motionless like infant ghosts, wrapped from head to toe in protective fleece. Everyone knows that 41°F is too cold for tomatoes, but spring had been deceptively warm, and I couldn’t help myself. AccuWeather had issued a grim prediction for the night’s minimum temperature. Only a few days previously, I had been openly proud that my plants had been in the ground for two weeks. I felt foolish and impetuous.

gardening

Tuesday

Dan Fox

Tomato-gate: how I reclaimed my garden

Nothing beats befuddling my French garden neighbors each year with ridiculously early, cold-resistant tomatoes. I live in a tumbledown village in the Languedoc, population just shy of 1,000, and come spring each year I make it my business to confound the local gardening orthodoxy. My secret weapon is a full-spectrum LED grow light in my basement. Shhhhh! It’s not as illicit as it sounds – yes, they really are tomatoes that I’m growing, officer. While the local vieux garçons are still sharpening their spades and waiting for the Tramontane wind to stop scaring the dogs, I’ve been working in my subterranean lair since January, coaxing my Solanum lycopersicum into early adolescence.

garden
beaujolais
Roger Kimball

Beaujolais is the ideal summer wine

It’s been a while since we have traveled to Beaujolais, that ancient wine growing region along the Saône River north of Lyon. Since summer is nigh, it’s time for another visit. Beaujolais is an ideal summer red wine. It is almost always made exclusively from the Gamay grape, a cross between Pinot Noir and an ancient white varietal called Gouais. It is light, flowery, full of pleasing acidity and fruitiness, satisfying by itself and notably food friendly. Of course, anyone who writes about Beaujolais these days has to begin by issuing a little advisory, like the Surgeon General’s warning on packs of cigarettes and certain medications. A few decades back, Beaujolais was plagued by scandal.