Not too seriously wounded
Teresa Waugh
TOUCHÉ: A FRENCH WOMAN’S TAKE ON THE ENGLISH by Agnès Catherine Poirier Weidenfeld, £9.99, pp. 164, ISBN 0297852345 ✆ £7.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 What could be more annoying than the title of Agnès Catherine Poirier’s new analysis of her country’s oldest enemies? It conjures up memories of Les Carnets du Major Thomson, a dreadful book that had the whole of France splitting its sides with laughter back in the Fifties mostly about bowler hats and rolled umbrellas, bad weather, stiff upper lips, filthy food and frigid women. So is Poirier’s take on the English going to be another facetious exercise in cliché and overworked generalisation? Something akin to Peter Mayle’s absurd mockery of the French, even of their language with which he was apparently barely conversant?
Luckily not, for Poirier is a highly intelligent person and a serious political journalist who, having lived through a love affair with this country and spent many years here, has no problem with her English. She writes at times thuggishly, at others frivolously, although this is not an essentially frivolous book. Whilst being a take on the English, it is also, to some extent, a take on the French, for Poirier presents her various theses — on politics, culture, sex, class very much by means of compare and contrast. Yet somewhere along the line, with globalisation or Americanisation or whatever, the differences between our two countries are becoming ever more indistinct — with, for instance, the abominable Starbucks invading not just England, but France too.
Her love affair with England started when, as a schoolgirl, she was seduced by Conan Doyle, Shakespeare in translation (‘Etre ou ne pas titre?’), and shortbread, since which time she has travelled far and read massively. Having thoroughly walked the streets of London, which she evokes with affection, she must know the city better than most. She has certainly put herself in a position where she has every right to talk about the English.
Politics is Poirier’s subject and a serious political vein runs through the book right from the start, when she draws an interesting picture of what she calls the ménage à trois which consists of France, England and America. She reminds us of how it all began, with the Lafayettes of this world, young liberal aristocrats, leaving to fight for freedom in the American War of Independence. They returned to find France on the boil and ready for what she describes as ‘the bloodiest and perhaps the most glorious’ revolution.
Just as Poirier’s heart sinks when she turns to the subject of sex (about which everyone lies) and class in England, so may her readers’. Everything that needs to be said about class in England and a great deal more nonsense has already been reiterated a thousand times, and to idealise what she saw as the classless society in which she grew up is surely to see through rose-tinted spectacles. She may well have played with Catholics, Jews and Muslims in her childhood, but only in France have I heard supposedly educated people announce quite proudly, ‘Je suis raciste.’ It is difficult, if you know France at all well, to be surprised by much of what Poirier says. Most members of the chattering classes would agree with a great many of her opinions about our pet-lovers, our press or our Queen. They might be surprised, but delighted, by her liking of treacle tart and amused by her concern at our having no minister specifically for culture, or by her analysis of our apologetic — she thinks hypocritical — manners. Nevertheless, some of her insights into, for instance, Britain’s relationship to the EU, or how the British cinema sold out to anodyne American taste, make interesting reading. But perhaps the most fascinating thing about this book is not what it tells us about ourselves but what it tells us about France. Or about one French woman and her take on France.
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