France and Britain seem to have crept just a little closer recently, as though we needed to cling together under the duvet of friendship to protect ourselves from the cold wind of austerity. Not that anything naughty is happening under the duvet – it’s all in the spirit of cordial entente.
First there was the Tour de France, which captivated Yorkshire and then the south of England too. Millions of people turning out to watch the peleton of riders whizz past in a blur of lycra. Or rather to stand for hours waiting for the riders to turn up while the sponsors’ “caravan” of logo-adorned vehicles files past and young hostesses bombard the crowd with free samples of sweets, drinks, and (judging from the TV pictures) baseball caps advertising French hypermarkets. The Tour is a great sporting event, yes, but it is also a massive marketing spree. On summer days at the beach I still wear the supermarket baseball cap that was thrown at me a few years ago in the Alps. If I were famous, I’d be asking for sponsorship money.
An English person said to me that it was a matter of pride, the way we Brits took the Tour to heart and turned out along the route in far greater numbers than the event attracts in France. It sounded as if Brits were meant to be more efficient somehow, better at celebrating. But I’m sure that’s not the way the French look at it. They think, look at all those Anglais showing how much they adore French sport. And look at all those English people wearing hats emblazoned with a French supermarket logo.
But it’s true, the shared enthusiasm for cycling did ignite a spark of fellow feeling over the weekend, and I’m sure that the breakdown in the Channel Tunnel which messed up the logistics of the caravan’s return to France won’t deter the organisers from sending the peleton back to the UK soon. Especially because, miraciulously, it looks as though London drivers managed to resist the temptation to yell at the pushy cyclists while trying to knock them off their bikes.
I was just across the Channel from England at the weekend, on the northern French coast, and saw the preparations for the Tour’s arrival around Le Touquet, mainly in the form of future roadblocks. From what I could see, the riders were going to do some very pleasant riding through the surprisingly dense woodland around the coastal resorts. A bit of fresh air after all that London smog.
I was up north in a spirit of Tour de France-like cordial entente, though without the lycra. I was attending the opening of a new museum, the Centre de l’Entente Cordiale at the Château d’Hardelot, just outside Boulogne. It’s a small castle, a Victorian folly built on the ruins of a medieval castle by its British owner in the late 19th century. These days he certainly wouldn’t get planning permission, but 150 years ago, no one minded an Englishman slapping a sort of miniature Windsor Castle on top of an archaeological site. It has weathered well, though, and now looks very grand, as if Henry VIII had built a holiday home on the French coast. Which he almost did, by the way – in 1544, he went to Hardelot to hold peace talks with the French, and during the negotiations, he sent his army to besiege Boulogne. It’s one of the reasons why the French still call treacherous Britain “perfide Albion”.
I was there this weekend because I curated the permanent exhibition in the château, suggesting events from Anglo-French history that we could commemorate within the renovated castle. A painting showing Mary Queen of Scots saying farewell to France, for example (she was half-French, and ultimately had her head cut off because if it); some excellent Gilray cartoons taking the pee out of Napoleon; a beautiful bust of Queen Victoria, who (briefly and platonically) was enamoured of Emperor Napoleon III. The exhibition, in eight lavishly decorated rooms, is designed to be a kind of 3D version of my book 1000 Years of Annoying the French, using real historical objects. Light-hearted but authentic.
I can’t claim credit for the jokiest of the exhibits. I said we needed to portray Joan of Arc, but I wasn’t expecting them to find an old English chimney piece embossed with a picture of the poor martyred girl. Tasteless British humour if ever I saw it. But when I gave some local politicians a guided tour, they laughed, so the weekend mood of Entente Cordiale wasn’t dispelled. Then again, the French are always inexplicably forgiving of anything that they can explain away as “l’humour anglais”.
Entry to the museum, by the way, is free so that everyone can come and get into the Anglo-French mood. And the project is being financed by the local council, with many of the exhibits on permanent loan from the Louvre and France’s other national collections of art and furniture. Public money being lavished on a lively new museum – now there’s another idea that the French might like to send over to the UK, preferably for more than a weekend.
Stephen Clarke’s latest book is Dirty Bertie: an English King Made in France, the story of King Edward VII’s often scandalous exploits in France. Edward was,of course, one of the architects of the Entente Cordiale, mainly because he wanted the French and the Brits to be friends so that nothing would ever prevent him travelling to France for a bit of risqué fun.
