One of the French newspapers recently tweeted a news story about a Russian politician claiming that Britain was Russia's eternal enemy. It was quite heartening to see lots of French people objecting; it was them, not the Russians that were our biggest enemy.
It’s quite touching to see Ed West’s emotional outbursts over France — or, more precisely, the idea of France! I share his love of France, though not the France of military pomp, and glory, but the France of dangerous, world-shaking ideas! (Sorry, Ed, we only live once.)
And yes, Macron is the “tragic hero” whose historical significance much of France has yet to appreciate!
On a much lighter note: I might do the same if they grant me a property/land plot in rural France, a steady supply of wine and cheese, and enough time to read Proust in French!
What are France’s ‘dangerous, world-shaking ideas’? Dangerous, I agree; world-shaking also. But worthwhile?
Existentialism was twaddle, though I admit that the relatively sane one, Camus, wrote a few decent novels for 17 year olds.
Maximilien Robespierre, perhaps, and his bunch of insane blood-lusting rationalists?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that ‘liberal’ who gave away his kids to die in eighteenth-century orphanages?
Foucault? Lacan? Deleuze? Obfuscatory twaddle, the replacement of meaning with faux, academic jargon, the reduction of thought to insincerity, their own hideous lives, and the way all of this somehow took hold in universities over here?
‘The horror. The horror.’
Give me Sam Johnson, Hume, and Locke any day over those French creeps. For starters, they at least wrote clearly.
Ive been to Paris for the last few days on my honeymoon, and this afternoon my wife insisted I ditch her to fulfill my wish to finally go to Hotel Invalides. Like Paris itself these days, the spirit is a breath of fresh air compared to London - it's continued reverence of the forces that after all, brought the French people freedom and riches. That is, literal force.
France has a lot of fundamental problems, but Gaullism survives to some extent (is on the rise again), and they seem for sure to be much less emotionally hostage to their own colonial past than the UK. Since France has its own brand of insane academics it seems to have missed being permeated by the worst of American progressiveness. The main issue remains anaemic growth and multiculturalism, but militant French republicanism might actually have a footing chance of providing a common platform?
It also seems to be the last country on earth that still really treasures high culture openly in society. All in the spirit of de Gaulle. We need the obstinate, insufferable, stubbornly idiosyncratic and irrationally self-proud France now more than ever so wishing them the best.
Is it worth pointing out that our record as allies has been disastrous for England and Britain all the way from Wolsey's French Alliance at the time of the 1527 Treaty of Westminster, through the ongoing Stuart French infatuation and Harley-Bolingbroke's latently treasonous Jacobite Tory administration of 1710–1714 right up to Crimea, China, the Great War and Suez.
Every time some 'bright spark' thought it up again it worked disastrously against England and Britain's direct national interest.
The periods of alliance were always hugely unpopular, ruinously expensive of both treasure and prestige, and always attnded by a more than a lingering sense that the French were cleverly using us for their own ends.
Our dalliances with France always end up, at best, involving monstrous and futile expense abroad and enervation at home. At worst, disaster shame and defeat. Lastly and most disastrously in the national Flodden which was the Great War.
The Battle of the Dunes (1658) was another Anglo-French venture which was a complete military success, and resulted in France replacing Spain as the No.1 power, greatly expanding it's territory, while England only gained Dunkirk (which was then sold to France).
Suez was a political fiasco but I believe an impressive military feat by the Anglo-French forces.
‘It’s enough to make a grown Englishman cry.’ I agree.
‘Here, under an unsmiling bronze statue of Napoleon (itself made from Russian and Austrian guns captured at Austerlitz), a grand republican liturgy was conducted with Macron as the chief celebrant.’
Macron just does this stuff and is narcissistic enough – (obviously not a French trait) – and has a Gallic nose – to think it actually works.
‘Thank you and your creative genius for this grandiose ceremony’, Macron said on X/Twitter about the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony.
Remember that horror show?
Drag artists parodying da Vinci’s The Last Supper. A bonkers rainy froth of disjointed nonsense down the Seine. The painful wonder that, this is actually happening – but for hours and hours. Keir Starmer looking soaked and pissed off in a cagoule, but having to be there.
And reducing French history to a cabaret joke.
It’s impossible to take Macron seriously. But France, and Europe, is in a right mess, and of course many of us fear what will come next.
And they repaid us when we joined the EEC by creating the common fisheries policy (which was only created when the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Norway applied to join the EEC.
One of the French newspapers recently tweeted a news story about a Russian politician claiming that Britain was Russia's eternal enemy. It was quite heartening to see lots of French people objecting; it was them, not the Russians that were our biggest enemy.
It’s quite touching to see Ed West’s emotional outbursts over France — or, more precisely, the idea of France! I share his love of France, though not the France of military pomp, and glory, but the France of dangerous, world-shaking ideas! (Sorry, Ed, we only live once.)
And yes, Macron is the “tragic hero” whose historical significance much of France has yet to appreciate!
I'm actually leaving substack to join the Foreign Legion.
Wow! Congrats Ed! This is a great honor!
On a much lighter note: I might do the same if they grant me a property/land plot in rural France, a steady supply of wine and cheese, and enough time to read Proust in French!
What are France’s ‘dangerous, world-shaking ideas’? Dangerous, I agree; world-shaking also. But worthwhile?
Existentialism was twaddle, though I admit that the relatively sane one, Camus, wrote a few decent novels for 17 year olds.
Maximilien Robespierre, perhaps, and his bunch of insane blood-lusting rationalists?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that ‘liberal’ who gave away his kids to die in eighteenth-century orphanages?
Foucault? Lacan? Deleuze? Obfuscatory twaddle, the replacement of meaning with faux, academic jargon, the reduction of thought to insincerity, their own hideous lives, and the way all of this somehow took hold in universities over here?
‘The horror. The horror.’
Give me Sam Johnson, Hume, and Locke any day over those French creeps. For starters, they at least wrote clearly.
Masterful and very timely article!
Ive been to Paris for the last few days on my honeymoon, and this afternoon my wife insisted I ditch her to fulfill my wish to finally go to Hotel Invalides. Like Paris itself these days, the spirit is a breath of fresh air compared to London - it's continued reverence of the forces that after all, brought the French people freedom and riches. That is, literal force.
France has a lot of fundamental problems, but Gaullism survives to some extent (is on the rise again), and they seem for sure to be much less emotionally hostage to their own colonial past than the UK. Since France has its own brand of insane academics it seems to have missed being permeated by the worst of American progressiveness. The main issue remains anaemic growth and multiculturalism, but militant French republicanism might actually have a footing chance of providing a common platform?
It also seems to be the last country on earth that still really treasures high culture openly in society. All in the spirit of de Gaulle. We need the obstinate, insufferable, stubbornly idiosyncratic and irrationally self-proud France now more than ever so wishing them the best.
Is it worth pointing out that our record as allies has been disastrous for England and Britain all the way from Wolsey's French Alliance at the time of the 1527 Treaty of Westminster, through the ongoing Stuart French infatuation and Harley-Bolingbroke's latently treasonous Jacobite Tory administration of 1710–1714 right up to Crimea, China, the Great War and Suez.
Every time some 'bright spark' thought it up again it worked disastrously against England and Britain's direct national interest.
The periods of alliance were always hugely unpopular, ruinously expensive of both treasure and prestige, and always attnded by a more than a lingering sense that the French were cleverly using us for their own ends.
Our dalliances with France always end up, at best, involving monstrous and futile expense abroad and enervation at home. At worst, disaster shame and defeat. Lastly and most disastrously in the national Flodden which was the Great War.
The Battle of the Dunes (1658) was another Anglo-French venture which was a complete military success, and resulted in France replacing Spain as the No.1 power, greatly expanding it's territory, while England only gained Dunkirk (which was then sold to France).
Suez was a political fiasco but I believe an impressive military feat by the Anglo-French forces.
‘It’s enough to make a grown Englishman cry.’ I agree.
‘Here, under an unsmiling bronze statue of Napoleon (itself made from Russian and Austrian guns captured at Austerlitz), a grand republican liturgy was conducted with Macron as the chief celebrant.’
Macron just does this stuff and is narcissistic enough – (obviously not a French trait) – and has a Gallic nose – to think it actually works.
‘Thank you and your creative genius for this grandiose ceremony’, Macron said on X/Twitter about the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony.
Remember that horror show?
Drag artists parodying da Vinci’s The Last Supper. A bonkers rainy froth of disjointed nonsense down the Seine. The painful wonder that, this is actually happening – but for hours and hours. Keir Starmer looking soaked and pissed off in a cagoule, but having to be there.
And reducing French history to a cabaret joke.
It’s impossible to take Macron seriously. But France, and Europe, is in a right mess, and of course many of us fear what will come next.
It may be over 200 years since we and France fought on different sides, but they have not been a reliable ally throughout that time.
Palmerston's Folly of the forts built above Portsmouth in the 1860s betray a lack of faith in Napoleon III's motives.
And weren't the French the prime movers (along with the unelected EU Commission) of the punishment beating we received for Brexit?
And they repaid us when we joined the EEC by creating the common fisheries policy (which was only created when the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Norway applied to join the EEC.
well, de Gaulle had a thing or two to say about that...