25 September 2004

What guff people do talk. To read the hysterical press which greeted last week’s pitch-invasion in the Palace of Westminster you would have thought the unguarded nature of the Commons Chamber was news to anybody. You would have thought the pro-hunt protesters had found a loophole which nobody had thought of. You would have thought

Paris ‘Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France.’ Thus de Gaulle, in one of the greatest first sentences of the 20th century, and he spoke for many humbler Frenchmen — or rather, as ‘humble Frenchmen’ is an oxymoron, let us say many other Frenchmen. This is a strange country,