Living in Two Cultures

...The British can’t cook, of course, and dish up peas with the consistency of lead pellets and the appearance of fluorescent beads...

...When I told school friends and teachers that my mother was making her cakes and puddings three to six months before Christmas, they just shrugged...

...cole des Mines for those with a scientific inclination...

...Over the years, one learns to enjoy the duality and cobble the elements into a single personality...

...But then, a waitress in an English caf...

...This has been accompanied by a change of style and tone, from Lady Fortescue’s Perfume from Provence (1937), at once patronizing and sensitive to the beauty of the region, to Peter Mayle’s bestselling series of books on Provence that blend gourmet and oenological enthusiasm with mockery of such easy targets as the French bureaucracy, neighbors and local artisans...

...et de la recherche m?dicale, National Institute for Health and Medical Research...

...To make things worse, we spoke English at home...

...Or does it go unsaid, as in English...

...telecommuters who take a cheap flight to their head office in London once or twice a month...

...Asked what their favorite dish is, more and more children in France tend to answer hamburger and pasta with ketchup, unlike our son who, when he was four, amazed his French schoolteacher by replying “foie gras and canard ? l’orange...

...Invariably, I would be reminded accusingly that it was the English who burned Joan—as if, more than 500 years down the road, I bore any responsibility...

...When we were in England, it was nearly as bad...

...It was the reverse for most of the other children in the village, and it was too much bother to explain that my father was a writer...

...Franglais has crept into French via American movies, journalists reporting from such suspect outposts as Washington, D.C., and, most devastatingly, the Internet...

...Our friendship has survived this m?sentente, even though I am convinced she would have reacted differently had she not known that I am a “bicultural” hybrid of British and French background...

...They examine AngloFrench interaction in history and culture from their generally complementary, occasionally conflicting viewpoints...

...I might have retorted that I found her obfuscatingly Gallic that afternoon...

...They enjoy the way of life, the pubs, the congenial atmosphere at work (in spite of long hours—for some, longer than in France), the cosmopolitan mix...

...The crucial distinction between Britain’s “background” and France’s parcourswas, until recently, that the latter was perceived to be more egalitarian— even if access to Oxford is not as narrowly conditioned as some in France would claim...

...My higher education was plagued by confusion...

...We really were hopeless...

...16.7 in Britain...

...I learned as well to avoid offering Christmas cake to those I could not trust to finish their slice, who would say it was, er, rather stodgy, don’t you think...

...In makeup and miniskirts (none for me—my mother was firmly French on such issues), they seemed open to flirtation and altogether more “liberated” than their counterparts across the channel...

...This despite the efforts of people like the peasant and antiglobalization campaigner, Jos...

...Nonetheless, barriers are thawing...

...Tell me about your background...

...I discovered the Beatles and the twist long before the other girls in my French primary school, thanks to a Scottish student, Bill, in town to improve his French, who occasionally looked after us Valls-Russell children when our parents went out...

...I would be told I could not possibly be English because I spoke with an appalling French accent...

...The parcours, however, does not stop there...

...At the market you hear the local patois spoken in the early morning and English from midmorning on...

...people who have taken early retirement and dream of running a tea shop or a bed-and-breakfast (chambre d’h?tes...

...Bov?, who burned down a McDonald’s in 1999, and French chef JeanPierre Koffe, who campaigns actively against la malbouffe...

...After a while, I learned to stop trying to explain that cakes could be like vintage wine, maturing and improving with time...

...And neighbors were bewildered that we ate real cooked meals at lunchtime...

...This spirit was captured in A nous les petites Anglaises (1976), a film directed by Michel Lang set in Kent, where two French boys are sent to improve their English and seize the opportunity to develop their knowledge of the fairer sex...

...One year when we were heading north across France, a British friend mapped out his favorite route...

...We did not go to catechism or to mass and I had an unorthodox first name—there is no saint in the calendar called Janice...

...One learns to shrug at the reductive labels that occasionally resurface...

...Yet Franglais does not always make for greater mutual understanding of institutions or clearer communication...

...My parents had to bring their tea over, as well as such unknown ingredients as golden syrup or treacle to make such mysterious treats as Christmas pudding, cake and mince pies...

...The INSERM team was accused of “wanting to impose as a model certain Anglo-Saxon, essentially North American, practices,” and of drawing on “bibliographical references that were overwhelmingly AngloSaxon...

...For obvious reasons, I myself was deeply moved, and disturbed, by the Tombses’ account of the mutual misunderstanding that darkened yet more the tragic debacle of May-June 1940...

...It’s a way of checking whether onecomes from the “right” school, the “right” university, ideally the “right” Oxbridge college, with that whole range of unsaid assumptions: “right” accent, social contacts, and so forth...

...People (the general public) read about people (celebrities) dans la presse people (in glossy gossip magazines...

...Of particular interest is the “circuit” one has followed, the parcours it is assumed one must have trod...

...Teenagers lounge about wearing un sweet (a sweatshirt), un jogging (tracksuit trousers), and des baskets (sneakers...

...Analysis of political and military events is interspersed with short, lighter notes on, for instance, French opinions of Shakespeare and the two countries’ attitudes toward their languages...

...French university lecturers considered my writing insufficiently “Cartesian,” whereas English instructors thought my prose “corseted...

...In the wake of those objections the INSERM team has backpedaled, acknowledging that its study may have been peremptory and one-sided...

...Those who, much later, read Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part One took his portrayal of La Pucelle as an “ugly witch” and a “fell banning hag” as “proof ” of the Bard’s personal prejudice...

...No motorways, lovely landscapes with tree-lined roads, church spires and chateaux—and mainly, a chain of gastronomic hotel-restaurants...

...What, you mask ask, do all these crossover people eat...

...Journalists refer to l’administration Bush (whereas in French administration refers to civil servants, not members of the government), they say r?aliser to mean “realize” or “understand” (whereas the verb means “create” or “attain...

...Whatever their differences, they have been put through the same mold—as critics of the system would say—and know the same unspoken codes...

...One of the factors that drives her opponent, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, might be that, atypically, he did not follow the circuit of grandes ?coles...

...But the Franglais phenomenon has enabled Britons who settle in France to muddle through without really learning French...

...Conversely, many long harbored an impression of France aptly summed up by Margaret Cole writing in Commentary in the early 1970s: “Frivolous dangerous France, where Paris glitters and young things get in trouble...

...Now, what’s the Japanese for bon app?tit...

...Not all expats are that adaptable, though, so supermarkets in rural areas are offering Heinz baked beans, salad cream, and ready-mix dumpling batter...

...Centrale for top-notch engineers (in Paris, of course, not, say, Lyon...

...He would bring over his records and show us how to twist around the dining room table...

...These tests . . . would make it possible to detect any deviation from the standard, according to the criteria established in Anglo-Saxon scientific literature,” read the opponents’ petition, which gathered some 200,000 signatures...

...Polytechnique for those who combine a scientific bent and ambitions to serve in France’s prestigious public sector industries— even if quite a few have been privatized in recent years...

...What’s your background...

...He gives the impression of having had to fight his way forward, elbowing others out of his path...

...Sometimes, a salutary lesson on the art of travel (and being a fin gastronome) comes from the English side of the Channel...

...We did not attend Anglican or any other services...

...This has contributed to skepticism among some sectors of French research about theories advanced across the Channel or, worse, the Atlantic...

...Memories of growing up with one foot on either side of the Channel were stirred in me as I read the impressive new book entitled That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (Knopf, 782 pp., $40.00) by the historians Robert and Isabelle Tombs, a married couple...

...Background”— there’s a very British word...

...They also eat frogs’ legs and snails—never mind that I first tasted the former at age 40, or that my French husband and in-laws hate the latter...

...The emphasis in France is not on where one comes from, but where one has been...

...Ray Alan, a regular contributor to THE NEW LEADER, ironically wrote in 1986, “From Le Monde in recent years I have learned that . . . Oxford undergraduates have their university places reserved for them at birth...

...Like my parents, Robert is English, Isabelle French...

...One thing the British and French have in common is that, except for a small minority (the Tombses reassuringly claim the group is growing in France), they are dismally bad at languages...

...We lived in France, and my French mother went out to work while my British father stayed at home...

...My friend did not realize she was deploying a phrase coined as a spoof by Lewis Carroll—for the King’s messenger in Through the Looking-Glass (“skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel . . . with his great hands spread out like fans on each side”)—and turned by Angus Wilson into the title of an endearing novel...

...More bluntly, sure enough, than an English person offered ris de veau (sweetbread), a sought-after delicacy, who might remark that it is, uh, interesting...

...Les blogs are all the rage, especially among politicians...

...Naturally, les Anglais eat jam with their meat or, worse, sauce ? la menthe...

...All kinds of people are crossing the Channel southward: young builders, doityourself enthusiasts who have sold off their homes to buy, restore and sell old properties (to other Brits, because they pay better...

...The “French touch” still sells...

...But everyone, anyhow, French or British, meets up in Chinese restaurants these days, or considers Japanese sushi trendier than steak and kidney pie or boeuf en daube...

...Fortunately, there were some advantages to my dual upbringing...

...An Anglo-French Memoir Living in Two Cultures By Janice Valls-Russell PARIS In 1942 a young British soldier met a young Frenchwoman...

...My brother was bullied at his playground for the same reason...

...To be sure, we were different from everyone else...

...Give or take a few, there are the same number of Britons in France as French in Britain: about 400,000...

...What this illustrates, though, beyond the ethical debate on where the line should be drawn between child care and prevention, is the temptation to shake the red rag of “AngloSaxon” influence at those one wishes to rally to a cause...

...Hollande is an example of this, as is to some extent Royal, who, although her father was an Army officer, says she financed her studies herself...

...In France the codes are just as entrenched...

...And everyone eats what the British call “crisps”—even the revolting olive- peppermustard- or tomato-flavored ones...

...Joan of Arc was a real pain—not the poor girl, but learning about her in class...

...Bridging the gap, everyone eats chips— whether one calls them “French fries” north of the Channel or frites to its south...

...No wonder one girl warned me I would wind up in hell...

...Our son chipped in: “I know, I love olives...

...Hence the appeal he holds for people who feel “left out” of the “system”— and the contempt others express for a man they consider an upstart...

...Recently, while discussing social reforms with friends, I was rebuked with exasperation: “That’s a typically AngloSaxon attitude...

...The French eat their peas tiny and tender— at least they did until microwaves and advocates of al dente vegetables started changing things...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes regularly for the NLon French and Spanish affairs...

...was just as amazed to discover that the salad containing olives we had ordered was for him: “Those are olives, you know, not grapes,” she said...

...It would be interesting to know how many signers of the petition read all the way through the 70-page report...

...Prestige is attached to the system of grandes ?coles: ?cole normale sup?rieure, in the days when an education in the classics was a must...

...Today differences are blurring...

...English teenage girls (the real ones, over in England—not I) fascinated French boys in the 1960s...

...Others are choosing to work in London: as cooks, but also in banking, fashion or advertising...

...McDonald’s and other fast-food outlets have sprouted throughout the country, as have frozen-food stores...

...No wonder it took him a week to cross the country...

...Those interested in politics or journalism try “Sciences Po” in Paris, the real one, of course, at the select Fondation nationale de sciences politiques, not the ersatz institutions that have sprouted elsewhere...

...The study proposed tests for diagnosing and treating from toddlerhood potentially disruptive behavior patterns and antisocial tendencies...

...France’s state education system enables young people of relatively modest background to move up to the grandes ?coles and from there into the higher spheres...

...Ideally, one then moves up to l’?cole nationale d’Administration (ENA): Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was there at the same time as Fran?ois Hollande, secretary-general of the Socialist Party, and Hollande’s partner, S?gol?ne Royal, Socialist candidate for next year’s presidential elections— ENA is where the couple met...

...former teachers who offer language courses in Dordogne or the Pyrenees...

...For instance, it is distinctly infra dig to have been to a university...

...Meantime, thousands of young French people are crossing the Channel to study (the Tombses estimate their number at 50,000...

...In a small town in the foothills of the Pyrenees, 40 minutes south of Carcassonne, five children in the nursery class are English, there are two English property agents, and there is an English tea shop...

...The book is essential for anyone intrigued by, or personally involved in, Anglo-French relations...

...Statistics compiled by the Tombses suggest little difference in sexual precocity: The average age of the first sexual intercourse in 1998 was 16.6 years in France...

...Recently, for example, a large number of prominent French psychologists and psychiatrists attacked a study on conduct disorder carried out by a leading public research institute, INSERM (Institut national de la sant...