Antipodes

For a current president, there's no better way of gaining popularity than to announce that you'll be abandoning the job. That leaves...

People who grew up in English-speaking countries often remember a school story about the French princess Marie-Antoinette . Hearing that poo...

This old fellow—the Extreme Right-wing founder Jean-Marie Le Pen —looks as if he’s about to burst a valve in his backside: What kind...

Extracts from the newspaper  Le Rappel , 7 September 1870, quoting words spoken to the crowd by  Victor Hugo . I've tried to tr...

French school-children have always heard the expression "our ancestors, the Gauls"... without knowing too much about that civiliza...

Once upon a time, if you had asked me what the word "terrier" means, I would have said that it designates the kind of little dog y...

The erotic operation that English-speaking people designate curiously as blowing is generally looked upon, in France, as sucking . I...

Jeanne d'Arc . In English, Joan of Arc. Her family surname was d'Arc . And her given name was Jeanne (pronounced jun in French, l...

Here's an amusing trivia question, to test your knowledge of history. This tomb is located in an abbey in Farnborough (famous for its ai...

At 8 o'clock in the evening on 10 May 1981, this is the TV image that informed us that the new president of the Fifth Republic was a Soc...

We learn today in a book by the French journalist Bruno Fay that, according to information from former French PM Michel Rocard , it was in ...

People in France have known for decades that the French national railway system—called the SNCF —was implicated explicitly in the ignominiou...

I've mentioned already—in my articles entitled History of wine at Choranche [ display ] and Wine of a kind [ display ] —my interest i...

It would be an exaggeration to suggest that many generations of French kids have been inspired by charming tales about the anus of Louis XIV...

Most serious individuals concentrate upon one thing at a time. I'm not suggesting that they have what might be called "one-track mi...

Shortly after the French Revolution, a girl named Marianno was the heroine of a revolutionary song in the Occitanian language. The song bec...