• The Day That Went Missing is a heart-rending story as intensely personal as any tragedy and as universal as loss. It is about how we make sense of what is gone. Most of all, it is an unforgettable act of recovery for a brother.

    Jun 16,
  • The Day That Went Missing is a heart-rending story as intensely personal as any tragedy and as universal as loss. It is about how we make sense of what is gone. Most of all, it is an unforgettable act of recovery for a brother.

    Feb 22,
  • You’ll find that the English are more sentimental and more capricious than us French.  The films and plays liked by the general public here are swimming in sentimentality.  Clearly we’re no longer in the era when Dickens, at the end of his novels, had to satisfy his public by reassuring them that all his characters ended happily.  But among the English there are many who hang on to the need to believe that England is Paradise on earth.  They know the weaknesses in human nature, but would be made unhappy if they had to admit to them publicly.  This is the source on one hand of their sentimentality and on the other their need for a moral mask.  The

    Jul 14,
  • (From The Daily Telegraph, July 4th, and I so wanted to be wrong.) The Aussies: Right on Top When England beat the Australians in 2005, the celebration was a deranged combination of New Year's Eve, Summer Holiday and an official state reception. Cakes and ale and bread and circuses. That's how much it means. Alas, such garish outbursts of joy reflect the unlikeliness of an England win. An Ashes series looms once again, spreading the chill shadow of Australia's recent dominance. Forget their early exit from the Twenty20 World Cup – Test matches are what Australian cricketers do best. Can you feel it? Here it comes, that familiar dark-green aura: unflappable, relentless, invincible. They're coming to get us. An English

    Jul 12,
  • Don’t work too hard.  Above all don’t be what they call ‘fussy’.  Wait until someone asks you to do something.  Don’t rush to do what needs doing in advance, or not with any excessive ardour.  You ask me:  ‘Are they lazy?’ Not exactly.  They think it betrays pride to want to do too much.  Look at how they walk.  Quite slowly, very long strides.  That’s how they get on in life.  They don’t like to jostle destiny.  In the army, they used to say to me: ‘Never refuse a mission.  Never ask for one either.’ They’re ambitious like people everywhere, but they hide it pretty well.

    Jul 12,
  • Victorian modesty is dying.  Finally, the scientific reasoning of Freud and his disciples has licensed the Anglo-Saxons to express their passions.  In the London theatres you will see plays that are so bold no-one would dare stage them in Paris.  You will read American and English novels that are astonishingly cynical.  Don’t get carried away.  Their extreme cynicism is itself a sign that there remains a large portion of Puritanism.  This makes for a unique and explosive combination which a foreigner is advised to handle with care.   Especially as the British masses are less convinced by these new mores.  Julian Huxley tells a representative story.  At the London Zoo, a lady approaches the keeper at the hippopotamus pit. ‘Excuse me,’

    Jul 11,
  • In England, don’t kill anybody.  You’ll be hung.  In front of a French jury, if you have a bit of imagination, a good-looking face and a smart lawyer, you can just about save yourself.  But twelve English jurors will have no sympathy for your hurt and heartbreak.  They'll have you strung up by the neck until you’re dead. So be careful, and avoid their courts of law.  The cross-questioning of their lawyers is so unbearably skilful that to escape their hail of questions you'll gladly swear you stole Nelson’s Column. Remember that respect for the law is greater here than elsewhere.  In English, ‘Keep Off the Grass’ does not mean ‘Go On Then, No-one Really Cares.’

    Jul 09,