Faber & Faber

Many of us fall in love with Corsica but it rarely lasts. The French call her l’Ile de Beauté, which helps mask their unease about a place of perpetual insurgency, unrest and superstition. I was smitten on sight, for its beauty, of course but also for its atmosphere – the foreignness, the impenetrability – and [...]

Although I have always called myself a feminist, I was, in the days following Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, unable to join the sisterhood in condemning a man — albeit of dubious moral record — for the crime of attempted rape before he had actually been found guilty. Having written a piece (that was never published) attempting [...]

The idea that sex can be an addiction has always been laughed out of the room in France. After DSK’s arrest in New York, are the French coming round to the hitherto derided notion of the sex addict? Thierry Ardisson, a French chat show host, in a recent interview on French Radio RMC: “Everyone knew [...]

Why do so many French women – and not just powerful women in politics and the media – see DSK as the victim? Listening to the French equivalent of radio 4 this morning (France Inter) brought it home to me. France is one of the last great patriarchies. I could hardly believe my ears. There, [...]

When I first heard the news of Dominique Strauss Kahn’s arrest in New York I clapped my hand over my mouth in horror. The news was shocking in itself – attempted rape…unlawful imprisonment – but my alarm went deeper than the accusation itself. It felt like a kind of reckoning, a death knell to a [...]

This month, a bill making the wearing of the burqa* illegal in public will become law in France. Predictably, as an Englishwoman I have mixed feelings about this law. On the one hand I agree with Sarkozy’s former minister, Fadela Amara, who like the majority of her fellow French Muslims, objects to the burqa as [...]

Racial prejudice in France, each time it manifests, is generally expressed in the guise of secularism. We’ve got nothing against Muslims, goes the message, we just don’t believe that religion has a place in the identity of the French nation. The public debate launched by Nicolas Sarkozy via website on November 2nd last year on [...]

Once again and for the sixth time since my two boys went back to school in September, there is a general strike, a day of “interprofessional mobilisation.” Today, however, both of my sons’ teachers have decided to work. It would not be seemly for me to ask them why, but I suspect the reason is [...]

I was absent for the parent-teacher meeting, so this week I was called in to see my son’s teacher, recently posted to our village school. My heart sank. Having put one son (now aged 24) through L’Education Nationale, an institution for which I feel a complex mixture of loathing and admiration, I experienced that particular [...]

I wish I didn’t but I do. I find Britain hard work these days. I went to London last week to promote the release of my book in paperback. Here is a small vignette from my journey: Nimes airport. A car park within sight of the departures hall. A walkway lined with lavender. The hiss [...]