I’ve long harboured a wish to paint. When I visit museums of modern art, I inevitably get a moment – as I suspect many of us do – of thinking, ‘Well, I could do that.’…
On a cold, blustery evening back in December, I was in the Vestry Hall, Richmond, London, helping a sweet old lady set out chairs. Every so often she stopped to wonder, ‘Where is everyone?’ or…
In the brouhaha leading up to the choice of France’s next president, no one has thought to interview the tailor who makes the constitutional suit. He isn’t easy to find, in fact, and when I…
Though no longer an expat, at least not in Mayotte, I still get email alerts of new threads on the expat blog’s Mayotte forum. (Actually, Mayotte being French, ‘expat’ is something of a misnomer, but…
Tiki and Percy were friends. It hadn’t always been so. When Tiki arrived, Percy had been there a dozen years. ‘Where on earth’, he wondered, ‘has this grotesque lump of wood come from?’ Tiki was equally…
http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/09/04/marine-le-pen-fait-sa-rentree-a-brachay_1482625 Roudy stared at her, blinking. ‘What makes you think I’m looking for anyone?’ It was Magali’s turn to be taken aback. ‘Well, if Benamrouche is innocent, the investigation has to start over from scratch.…
Shall we talk about ‘otherness’ in Othello? No? How about ‘flux’ in The Wild Palms? Doesn’t appeal either? Oh, well. It’s true they’re hardly topics for a natter on the phone, nor even a dinner…
‘And the police?’ asked Antoine. ‘Who’s in charge? We’re deep in gendarme territory here.’ To someone not French, that might seem a little opaque. Gendarme territory? What’s that? Well, actually, it’s simple: in France, you…
Have you ever read a roman de terroir? Or even better, written one? How do you even translate that? There’s no English equivalent for terroir, which is why you come across so many different translations:…