French tourists love Britain: our food, our freedom, our Royals

Some little-reported British news has emerged, which is positive for a change.

Let’s start with the French view of Britain.

Although England and France are historical enemies, The Telegraph‘s Anthony Peregrine tells us that all is not lost in ‘Britain through the eyes of French tourists: “It’s like being whisked back to a more refined era”‘. The article has a splendid photo of Betty’s Tearoom in Harrogate.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine:

Word has got about, not least in The Telegraph’s reader comments section, that the French don’t like us. Some don’t, of course … But an awful lot do like us, many of them very much. I know this because I have just conducted a survey.

The French remain the number two foreign visitors to Britain – after the US, but ahead of the Irish, Germans and Spanish – and, though 2022 numbers are still down on 2019 (the last normal tourism year), their spending jumped some 13 per cent, to more than £1.5 billion. So they not only appreciate us, but are paying handsomely to do so.

Despite the many Michelin-starred British restaurants to appear in recent years, our older food classics score highly:

Quite a lot of that cash is being spent on food – British food which, against all expectations, the French like …

Sunday roasts, notably in pubs, get every vote, as do fish and chips – so esteemed that they’re now found, in the original language (“le fish ’n’ chips”), across France – and, supremely, the full English.

Jean, an agronomist from Marseilles, said: “I have to admit that the first time I was served beans for breakfast, I was perplexed. But they’re really good, with egg, English bacon and sausage” …

Meanwhile, in a nation of cheese fanatics, Stilton stands so proud that a French chef I know named his dog after it. You hear a bloke yelling “Stilton!” in a park in the Tarn, you’ll know who it is. And its near, unpasteurised relative, Stichelton – served to our king and queen at the recent banquet in the Palace of Versailles – has been termed one of the five best cheeses in the world by multi-starred French chef Anne-Sophie Pic.

And there’s nothing like a decent curry or Chinese meal:

The sheer range of cuisines easily available in Britain is another source of pleasure among people who, on home territory, consider foreign food a threat to their national sovereignty. British stand-outs, though, are Asian restaurants. “In Indian and Chinese places, they serve dishes without compromise,” said Benoït, a civil servant from the Pas-de-Calais. “Similar restaurants in France invariably soften the edges.”

Afternoon teas are also popular:

Cucumber sandwiches and shortbread had several fans, as did Fortnum and Mason. Béatrice, county council officer in the Creuse department, said: “The place is so magnificent. It’s like being whisked back to a more refined era. And the tea with cakes – extraordinary!”

Home fare also scored highly:

Refinement is, nevertheless and evidently, an ace in the British hand. “Garden parties!” said Valérie, a tourism official from Avignon. “A jug of Pimms – unknown in France – sparkling in the sun, delicious to sip. Little canapés on old, unmatched plates… and port jelly as dessert.”

However, Valerie did object to the modern British way of catering for every possible eating issue:

Vegetarian, vegan, no gluten, no dairy, no tomatoes, no heaven-knows-what-else – you need an algorithm to work out what you can safely cook. We don’t ask such questions in France.

Incredibly, for a people whose grocery shopping revolves around daily markets, the French like ours, too:

A lady I know recently spent almost her entire city break in London at Camden Market. “Best bit by far,” she said. Borough and Spitalfields markets also had their aficionados, as did farmers’ markets further afield. “The only place I can get artisan-made chutney,” said Benoît.

He was not alone, either, in appreciating food courts-cum-markets like The Good Shed at Canterbury and Macknad at Faversham. Clearly, Britain is closing on France, market-wise.

Pubs are viewed as being more liberating than cafés:

Evelyne, a retired teacher from Montpellier, put it best: “Cafés in France are extensions of the street by other means. Pubs are cosy refuges from the street, for conversation and easy laughter.”

The French find that personal freedom is best expressed in Britain. This, too, amazed me:

Said Carole in Normandy: “There are the parks, of course, and the City. But the real Britishness is in the freedom to be oneself. The street is a show, but also a breath of liberty, less closed in by codes of conduct than Paris.”

Béatrice of the Creuse is of similar mind: “There’s real diversity, even fantasy, in London, which you don’t get in Paris. You feel you are swept along in a cosmopolitan crowd.”

This translates into a more informal life in Britain. Said Céline of Brittany: “I love the soft words and the chit-chat. People, especially shop-keepers and restaurateurs, call you ‘love’ or ‘sweetie’, they ask how you are. It lends warmth to exchanges.” Jean from Marseilles agrees: “That kind of kindness makes daily life really agreeable.”

And when, by night, British life flips over to party time, that’s pretty good too – even if, as he said, “dignity sometimes takes a hit”. Jean evidently knows Britain well enough to have mastered understatement rare in his hometown.

The Royal Family and what they represent also struck a chord:

Marnie, Countess de Vanssay – whose family have owned the Château de la Barre in the Loire valley for six centuries – was unambiguous. “On a personal note, I can say that as French aristocrats – and many French people who are not aristocrats would join me in this opinion – we miss the elegance and decorum that the English have preserved via their monarchy.

“In France, we have vulgar, common presidents who are playing at being monarchs, but have no tradition, no decency, no stature.”

Enthusiasm for royals is not confined to the French nobility. Commoners share it. Said Valérie from Avignon: “I have a lovely tin of shortbread produced for the coronation of Charles III. Everybody I know is very jealous. The equivalent in France would be a box of macaroons with a picture of the Macrons on it. We deprive ourselves of panache. If only we’d cut off a few fewer heads.”

The French even think our dramatists are better than theirs:

Fortunately, British theatre won over French theatre, said Countess de Vanssay, because it was witty and underplayed whereas the Parisian stage regularly overacted. Said Evelyne from Montpellier: “It’s Molière versus Shakespeare – and, even in France, most people know that the world would chuck Molière off a raft to save Shakespeare.”

Are there any things the French dislike?

They find us too apologetic and too verbose:

Valérie from Avignon admired the British talent for self-deprecation – “you need great self-confidence to pull that off,” she said – though grows quickly irritated by our constant apologising (“even for things you haven’t done”) and long-windedness. “Why say ‘in the not too distant future’, when ‘soon’ will do?”

The cost of entering historic churches rightly shocks them:

Several French people were scandalised that they had to pay to enter Westminster Abbey (£29 from Nov 1) and Canterbury Cathedral (£17).

“That’s not what places of worship are about,” said one, who was mollified, but not entirely, by the fact that most British museums are free, including the British Museum. I pointed out that entry to the Louvre is £14.75. “Ok,” she said, “but it’s one of the world’s greatest, and still cheaper than Canterbury cathedral.”

They had a few other quibbles:

Just a couple of things. Four, in truth. If we’d finally ditch feet and inches, stop putting milk in tea, improve the quality of coffee – and bin all cream crackers (a mystery to most French people), then scarcely anything would impede a truly cordiale entente.

I know what they mean about cream crackers, which I find absolutely vile.

Ultimately:

I could go on. Asking French people what they like about Britain opens floodgates – and Brexit really doesn’t get in the way.

Marvellous!

On the down side, the French have had drug shortages over the past few years. One of my French friends has been seriously impacted by it. We do not seem to have had that problem outside of Northern Ireland, which is, sadly, still largely regulated by the EU. So, there is one (more) positive point for Brexit, at least for mainland Britain.

On October 10, EuroNews carried a news story, ‘”Trying to find solutions”: Worsening drugs shortage is leaving pharmacists and patients in the dark’:

Shortages of common older medicines are increasing. Experts say it’s in part because pharmaceutical companies are de-incentivised from producing them.

At a pharmacy in eastern Paris, there’s a long list of medicines that are currently unavailable from suppliers.

Pharmacist Pierre-Antoine Drubay says he has seen these shortages increase in the last year, estimating that on any given day, around a third of the medicines patients are seeking are out of stock.

It is affecting medicines for all pathologies, he added, from antibiotics to medicines used to treat cardiovascular disease and diabetes. When the pharmacist’s supplier outside the French capital says the medicines aren’t available, the only option left is to troubleshoot …

Often, he has no information about why there is a shortage or when it will be over.

“It puts us in an awkward position with patients and doctors, it increases our workload, and the lack of transparency, that’s really the worst,” he added.

A new statement on Monday from one of France’s pharmacy unions, the USPO, called for more transparency as well, adding that drug shortages were becoming a permanent problem.

Officials are aware of the concerns, and with the prospect of a triple epidemic of COVID-19, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) this winter, France’s medicines agency (ANSM) presented a plan last week that aims to reduce potential shortages of commonly used drugs.

But this is also a larger problem that experts say has increased over the last decade due to production and supply disruptions related to how medicines are manufactured.

Older medications are often subject to shortages because medicine prices drop once a laboratory’s original patent expires and other companies can make generics.

“There is a shortage of these older drugs because they bring in less money than the new drugs, and since the pharmaceutical companies make less money, they try to save money,” said Professor Jean-Paul Vernant, a haematologist at the Paris hospital la Pitié Salpêtrière.

Both the active ingredients and manufacturing of medicines used to be done by pharmaceutical companies in France or other European countries, but increasingly, these companies have outsourced the work.

“To save money, instead of working with laboratories that they had worked with previously [chemical laboratories that manufacture the active ingredients and subcontractors that do the manufacturing], they send that work to India and China where it’s much cheaper,” said Vernant of the situation in France.

“In India and China, wages for people working in chemical factories are extremely low and environmental standards are very poor,” he added.

Pharmaceutical companies also do not keep stocks of these older medicines that are much less profitable than the newer therapies. A small disruption during manufacturing, for instance, can lead to a shortage.

The article goes on to say that France is not the only EU country experiencing crucial drugs shortages. The United States also has the same difficulties.

Returning to the French pharmacist, he says he is between a rock and a hard place:

Drubay says at his pharmacy in Paris, without more information about the shortages, it’s like working blindly. Sometimes the shortage only lasts a week, so the patient could have waited without it impacting their health as well.

“We didn’t have the information at the time and we sent the patient to the other side of Paris to be able to collect their medication,” he said.

But they can’t just tell patients to wait for medication when they don’t know when it will next be available.

“The patient wouldn’t come back to the pharmacy, and from a health perspective, it’s inadmissible to tell a patient that,” he added.

My commiserations. I hope that the EU — and the US — find a solution soon.

More positive news for Britain follows tomorrow.