Gavin Mortimer

Gavin Mortimer

Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

There’s nothing cowardly about the French

From our UK edition

Several years ago I visited the village of Couillery in Lower Normandy to interview Juliette Girard for a book I was writing about the wartime SAS. She was 80, small, grey and bird-like. She still lived on the farm on which she'd grown up, the same farm where in the summer of 1944 she hid three members of the SAS. The Germans knew the British had parachuted into the area and for nearly two weeks they scoured the countryside. They came to the farm where Juliette lived with her parents; they searched it inside out, but the soldiers had been smuggled out of the back, across a field and into a copse. I've been thinking a lot about Juliette recently.

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

The left hate to admit it, but rugby is no longer a pastime for the privileged

From our UK edition

Why do lefties hate rugby union so much? Not all of them, of course. There are one or two who enjoy the sport, but the majority loathe it. Tomorrow marks the start of the rugby World Cup, which is being hosted by England. You can be sure there will be plenty of moaning about the supposedly 'elite' sport. In 2013, Ian Stewart, a Labour party member and blogger, wrote in an article that he was partial to rugby, an admission he conceded many of his comrades would find 'as outrageous as professing a liking for bullfighting'. People, perhaps, like David Bowden, associate director of the Institute of Ideas, who has described rugby union as 'the sport of posh boys and coppers…the way that the English ruling classes have lorded it over those uncouth, working-class games'.

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

Who dares lies

From our UK edition

Sir Christopher Lee, who died last month aged 93, knew how to play a part. One of the consummate actors of his generation, whose career spanned nearly seven decades, his versatility on stage and screen was legendary. At first glance his military career during the second world war was similarly versatile. According to some reports and obituaries in the days after his death, Lee served in the Special Air Service (SAS), Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and Special Operations Executive (SOE). In reality he served in none. He was attached to the SAS and SOE as an RAF liaison officer at various times between 1943 and 1945, but he did not serve in them and never, as one paper stated, ‘moved behind enemy lines, destroying Luftwaffe aircraft and fields’.