Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
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By the time I was 15, I had put two rugby players in hospital. I broke the arm of one and knocked the other unconscious. Both were legitimate tackles, I was just better developed: bigger, stronger and more aggressive than my opponents. I got my comeuppance in New Zealand when, as a 19-year-old, I launched
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For once I find myself on the other side of the argument in agreeing that ‘Big Chief’, the erstwhile tomahawk-wielding mascot of the Exeter Chiefs rugby club, deserved to be axed. He was an affront to Native Americans, perpetuating the calumny that their ancestors were – to quote the Declaration of Independence – ‘merciless Indian savages’.
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Britain has been here before when it comes to furores about face masks. Exactly 80 years ago the same argument was raging, with the country split between those who wanted the wearing of gas masks to be made compulsory on pain of financial penalty, and those who maintained it should be an individual choice. Unlike
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Two well-known women were degraded last week as Britain continues to be ethically cleansed. The first was Nancy Astor, whose statue in Plymouth was dubbed with the word ‘Nazi’. The second was Baroness Nicholson, honorary vice-president of the Booker Prize Foundation, who was relieved of her duties after her views on trans issues and gay
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Winston Churchill: hero or villain? That was the question the BBC asked on its website on 10 June. It caused outrage in some quarters, but was Auntie taking its revenge for the humiliation it suffered at Churchill’s libertarian hands during the second world war? In the summer of 1940, a movement was launched in Britain
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If there is a God, He’s not French. Last night I was on the balcony of my apartment in Paris enjoying a celebratory ‘deconfinement’ bottle of wine; this morning on my first day of (partial) liberty there is heavy rain and high wind. So much for getting out and about on day one of post-lockdown
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Seven weeks confined to a city apartment changes a man. Trees, for example, have never been a particular passion of mine but recently I’ve spent many happy moments studying the plane tree outside my bedroom window, and in particular the magpies’ nest therein. On Saturday a baby magpie emerged from the nest and edged tentatively
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Today marks the third month of my confinement in my fifth floor apartment in Paris. As I wrote all those weeks ago, shortly after president Macron declared his ‘war’ on coronavirus, I had adopted a prisoner psychology to see me through what I suspected from the outset would be six weeks minimum of lockdown. I
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One of the persistent misconceptions of the riots that swept through France in the autumn of 2005 is that they were solely the result of the deaths of two youths as they ran from the police. The deaths of the teenagers on October 27 in Clichy-Montfermeil provoked unrest in the north-eastern Parisian suburb but it
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The mayor of Paris’s 20th arrondissement has asked residents of her neighbourhood to stop denouncing each other. ‘When it’s a question of violence against women or children, or selling drugs, I’m still all ears,’ said Frédérique Calandra this week. ‘But these calls stigmatising Parisians who wish only to get a breath of fresh for a
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A couple of hours before Emmanuel Macron addressed France on Sunday night I received a meme on WhatsApp from a French friend. It was a game card for ‘Macron’s Aperitif Bingo’, the rules for which were simple: swigs of a drink of your choice would have to be downed every time the president said a
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What with the wall-to-wall media coverage of the coronavirus pandemic it had rather slipped one’s mind that there are other serious issues confronting Europe, but France got a bloody reminder at the weekend. On Saturday, a knifeman ran amok in the south-eastern town of Romans-sur-Isere, killing two people and wounding five. According to eyewitnesses, the
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When I left my apartment for my morning run today I saw that someone had scrawled on the courtyard in large chalk letters ‘Tenez Bon, Les Voisins‘ (Hang in there, neighbours). It could have been a message for the whole country. France is flagging after two and a half weeks of complete lockdown and the
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As France prepares to enter its third week of confinement the Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, has warned that ‘the fight has only just begun’. Coronavirus has claimed 2,606 French lives to date, but at a press conference on Saturday evening Philippe said: ‘The first 15 days of April will be even more difficult than the
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As Boris Johnson self-isolates for seven days after testing positive for coronavirus, he must follow the example of his hero, Winston Churchill, in heeding the advice of his doctors. It was on the counsel of his chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, that the Prime Minister subjected himself to a test, which augurs well for the
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There was a touch of schadenfreude as I heard that Britain has followed France, Italy and several other European countries in locking down. In the last week or so there have been a number of articles about how Britain would never impose on its people the draconian measures taken by Emmanuel Macron and others because
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Seventeen per cent of Parisians have fled the city since President Macron ordered France to be confined, as part of his ‘war’ strategy to defeat coronavirus. The lockdown, which began on Tuesday, is for two weeks but on Friday the government indicated that it will likely be extended into April as France struggles to contain
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Any hope that the two week ‘confinement’ imposed by President Macron would heal France’s deep divisions has vanished as swiftly as food on the supermarket shelves here. There is growing anger in the provinces at the sudden arrival of thousands of well-heeled Parisians, who have fled the capital for their second homes. Many seaside residents
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I missed Emmanuel Macron’s address to the nation last night. I popped to the supermarket, guessing (correctly) that the queues of earlier in the day would have dissipated with most people at home in front of their television sets listening to what their president had to say. I stocked up on essentials – wine, cheese
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I’ve been writing a diary for 26 years and 2020 is shaping up to be a vintage one. I thought 2019 would be hard to beat, what with Brexit, Greta and Labour’s implosion, but this year I’ve been feeling like Samuel Pepys as the 21st century answer to the bubonic plague sweeps the world. The
