On the face of it, this is yet another foreigner’s complaint about the British.  The impression is underlined by the publishers’ (not the author’s) subtitles on the front cover:  ‘Why Britain and France are so different  … and why they do things in opposite ways’. Those, indeed, are among the book’s themes but there is a lot more to it than that.

The author, who has lived in the UK for a decade, writing for papers like Libération in France as well as The Guardian in Britain, is not out to slag off either country but to try to identify the reasons why the two often disagree. What makes her book such a pleasure to read is that her viewpoint is that of a sophisticated, relatively young, Parisienne who is both street-wise and knowledgeable about politics on both sides of the Channel - and who can be very funny about both the British and the French.

One of the key areas in which Mlle Poirier contrasts France and the UK is philosophy. France, she says, retains one based on ideals and values, while Britain has gone over to a society which puts money first. France may not be able to attain the ideals of the Revolution – Liberty, Fraternity, Equality – but it can still hold to them as an aspiration. In contrast, Britain, she argues, has abandoned such ideals in favour of a broad pragmatism: what works, works, what doesn’t, doesn’t. And what works in Britain, it seems, is what makes money, even if this enlarges the gap between the richest and poorest.

This attitude on the part of the UK, so close to that of America, in Mlle Poirier’s view, is what makes Britain’s role in Europe so difficult. So far from the Blairite dream of providing a bridge between Europe and the USA, the UK has all too rarely gone to bat for Europe against the USA in such fora as the World Trade Organisation. She notes, without much enthusiasm, that the UK did finally climb off the fence to side with the rest of Europe against the USA in favour of permitting countries to protect their cultural heritage.

Much of this will find a sympathetic hearing among British ex-pats in France, many of whom were motivated by similar views about both countries. Many of these will also share Mlle Poirier’s concern about a France governed by Nicolas Sarkozy. However, the downside of any book of this kind is the tendency to drift off into the guying of stereotypes. Thus there is a chapter on how mad the British are about animals – together with the wild assertion that the existence of animal rights’ terrorists are just an extreme form off pet-owning – with no acknowledgement that the French are at least as barmy about pets and allow their dogs into shops, bars and restaurants to a degree which would be unthinkable in Britain.

Among other things, Mlle Poirier is a film critic but she is not comfortable with her British counterparts whom she dismisses as lamentably ignorant of their field, particularly of films in other languages, and with the British film industry. The most recent British film she mentions favourably is Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange of 1971 and she seems to attribute the decline of British films very largely to Hugh Grant and those responsible for his, often very successful, movies. This is clearly something of a hobby-horse for the author but, happily, she does not generally indulge in such sweeping generalisations.

However, broadly, this is an attempt at a balanced appreciation of what has always been a tricky international relationship. Apart from the wit and cheery good humour with which Mlle Poirier takes us though her arguments, it is refreshing to have so many recent references. This degree of topicality, of course, can be a little double-edged. The book, first published in hardback in 2006, can give the readers sudden jolts with now dated references to Gordon Brown as still Chancellor of the Exchequer and Nicolas Sarkozy as Minister of the Interior.

Touché by Agnès Catherine Poirier reviewed by Martin Hills
Published in paperback by Phoenix 170pp
ISBN 978-0-7538-2170-1 £9.99