Faber & Faber

Please forgive me for not posting over the next few weeks. I shall be in the bosom of that miraculous nebula that is the French healthcare service but hope to return to work around Xmas. I would like to thank everyone who visits this blog, for their readership and/or comments and their participation in a conversation [...]

I had a call the other night from Jon Henley of The Guardian, who had reviewed my book and wanted to talk about a piece he was writing about French women. It seems there has been a sudden onslaught of books on the subject, some of them written by Anglo-Saxon women driven by the question: [...]

In two days time, six-power talks on Iran and its putative military nuclear programme are to be held in Germany, so I thought a little background to this show of international indignation might not go amiss… In 1974, in the midst of the cold war, America gave France permission to provide Iran, whose northern border was [...]

I like this photo of Chirac and Sarko taken in 1981. Chirac is 49 and pleased as punch. Sarko is 26 and struggling. With many things. His hair is but one of them.

I’m back in France after the longest time spent in England since I left twenty five years ago. My two and a half months in the motherland has left me dazed and confused and as far as this blog is concerned, mute for weeks on end. In writing about my understanding of France, I have [...]

I have a confession to make. I came home yesterday and found that someone had added the following comment to my last post: “This blog is even more boring that it seemed in the newspaper” (or words to that effect). Tired and emotional after a long day and a sleepless night and, turning the spaghetti [...]

I have been asked how I could have written a book about France without writing about food. I think the answer is simply that I felt it had been done so often before – and in some cases very well – that I didn’t feel there was much point. What I did hope to do [...]

There has been a long, guilt-ridden hiatus, in which I have thought about this blog, approached my computer then backed away from it, intimidated and lost for words. Perhaps it’s being back in England that has taken the wind out of my sails. There are so many subjects and messages, so much stuff pulsating at [...]

The other day I took my four year-old son for a swimming lesson in the public baths close to where I’m staying in Suffolk. Florine, a fourteen year-old French girl who is over for a week from the village where I live in France, came with me. This was my son’s third lesson and he [...]

I’ve been in England for two weeks, promoting this book about France and two encounters with British broadsheets have given me an interesting lesson in the workings of the media in this country. The first newspaper contacted my publishers offering to run an ‘extract’ from the book. Great excitement all round: it was every writer’s and [...]