The Xenophobe's Guide to the French

Their preoccupation with perceptions and conceptions makes the French much harder to govern than the Germans, who have a natural tendency towards acceptance of authority, or the English, who will grumble but do as they’re told.

They worship ideas and those who generate them, even if the ideas are only in vogue for the briefest of periods.

They love to feel that life is fast moving, energetic and stylish.

They see the English as small-minded, uncultured, badly dressed; a nation of people who spend most of their time gardening, playing cricket and drinking sweet, warm beer in pubs.

The French may no longer own much of the world, but French law, language and culture persist in every continent.

“They can be racist, chauvinistic and xenophobic, but always with great charm.”

The French see themselves as the only truly civilised people in the world. Long ago they discovered the absolutes, the certainties of life, and thus they feel they have a duty to enlighten the rest.

“Their charm is that they don’t despise the rest of us: they pity us for not being French.”

They have an expression, le discours, which can mean anything from idle chatter to a formal speech, but their favoured use of it is as ‘a piece of discursive reasoning’.

Beneath their chic and natty appearance they respond to atavistic and primitive impulses