One consequence of the United Kingdom’s victory in securing independence from the super-state pretensions of the European Union may be to rejuvenate the EU itself. Not that the UK, as a member state, posed an inexorable risk to the viability…
“France has neither winter nor summer nor morals,” observed Mark Twain. “Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.” The sage of Hannibal, Missouri, was right on both points. France’s temperate climate, moderated by the Gulf Stream, lacks the…
“There is a dayspring in the history of this nation, which perhaps those only who are on the mountaintops can as yet recognize,” Benjamin Disraeli wrote of England. “You deem you are in darkness, and I see a dawn.” Since January 31,…
President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Poland this week to assure his hosts that France will not let the Russians do anything bad to them. At the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, alma mater and home town of his host, President Andrzej…
France enters another week of strikes in public transportation, while the government hopes its latest offer will end the commuters’ misery. It is not only commuters who have been suffering long-delays or forced detours in rail and subway service. The…
’Tis indeed the season to be jolly, but don’t expect much merriment here. To be sure, the weeks of France’s ongoing strikes against the attempt by the government of President Emmanuel Macron to reform the country’s creaky retirement system is…
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s resounding win in last week’s United Kingdom elections is the rough equivalent of winning the U.S. presidency by a margin of 10 percent. That’s a landslide by anyone’s measure. Johnson campaigned on the slogan of “Get…
If, as is likely, you got your French history info from Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, you know the legendary French Resistance (small bands of patriots that suddenly included 40 million Frenchmen on June 8, 1944) began in Africa as well as…
London On Wednesday, President Donald Trump abruptly left a NATO summit near London and canceled a scheduled press conference after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was caught on camera amusing fellow big shots as he marveled at Trump’s long-winded sessions…