Skip to the loo, mon chéri
By Stephen Clarke There was a rather silly survey published last week, recycling and supposedly confirming ideas about the French being a nation that doesn’t wash its hands. I would have ignored it...
View ArticleFrance can’t make pyramids
By Stephen Clarke France is, of course, a very technologically advanced country. Apart from a few false starts with inventions like their Minitel (the now defunct precursor to the Internet), the...
View ArticleFrance has prince envy
By Stephen Clarke It can’t be a coincidence. Or if it is, it’s so unfortunate that it has to be destiny speaking. I’m talking about the latest exhibition at the Château de Versailles, France’s former...
View ArticleLe mariage royal causes an Anglo-French battle
By Stephen Clarke Before I go on, I must declare an interest – I was in London for The Wedding as an honorary Frenchman, commenting on proceedings for France Info, the national radio news station, from...
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A few French freedoms bite the dust
France is talking a lot about freedom at the moment, and amid all the serious discussion I was relieved to see a somewhat lighter piece of news: a family in the north of France wanted to call one of...
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France is still fighting Waterloo
One of the fun things about living in the eurozone is that while you’re waiting to pay for your coffee, you can examine your coins and see which country they’ve travelled from. Ah, you think, as the...
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Napoleon, the expat who left a limited mark on Elba
As an expat, you’re always hoping you’ll make some mark on your new country. We can’t all be like Picasso, the Spaniard with the château-museum in the centre of Paris, like Charlie Chaplin, the poor...
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More cash please, we’re Parisian
French cafés are places where rituals count. Not just the whole business of where you can or can’t sit (a couple will often be chased away from a table for four, for example); what you can order (don’t...
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Paris’s taxis, an endangered species
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Parisian taxis recently. Luckily, my latest book has attracted enough attention to get me invited to do TV and radio, and either my publisher or the production...
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Keeping cool in Paris
I remember the great Parisian heatwave of 2003. It felt as though the whole city was being turned into one big fondue. Someone somewhere was waiting for all the cheese to melt and flow out into the...
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