French Letter: The Dunkirk Spirit is coming home

The British press these days seems to be in a state of mortal dread. Nothing is going right. Everything is going wrong. It is as if someone has pulled the plug and the UK is about to disappear down the drain. 

I am left wondering what happened to the stiff upper lip that is supposed to be the hallmark of Britain’s response to misfortune. It is not as if the UK is alone in facing tough times. The whole of Europe is in turmoil. But there is a lot less hysteria on this side of the Channel. 

In France, thousands of holidaymakers have had to be evacuated from coastal areas ravaged by wildfires. There has been hardly any rainfall for months. The owners of second homes have watched their properties go up in flames. The Loire — 700 miles long — has been reduced to a series of puddles. But neither the French Government nor local authorities, nor the public is panicking. Instead, invoking a home-grown version of the Dunkirk spirit, they are buckling down and getting on with the job. 

Firefighters, joined by colleagues from across the EU, are working day and night to hold back the flames. Drinking water is being delivered to remote villages in tankers. Farmers and wine growers are coming up with ways to save and maximise their harvests. The absence of a collective whinge is nothing less than remarkable. 

The National Assembly has not been recalled. The assumption is that a national crisis will be dealt with by the relevant authorities working with the emergency services and local volunteers. 

Come September, with the resumption of political debate, the conversation is sure to dwell on climate change and what — if anything — can be done to prevent another summer like the one we are currently experiencing. In time, there will be demonstrations and blood on the streets of Paris. But for now, the right people are in the right places at the right time doing everything possible to save lives and property, spirits are up and the French are duly grateful. 

As for the myriad of other issues facing the nation — inflation at 6.5 per cent; fears of energy shortages in the winter; the shops running out of mustard — the French are displaying an admirable insouciance. As if reading one of those notices put up in hotel bedrooms warning of what to do in case of fire, it is sedulously guarding its sang froid. 

Local news and personal calamities are what sell French papers in August. You have to turn to the business pages to find out what is happening in the economy. The big news on Friday, making all the front pages, was that in a suburb of Lyon an altercation between the police and a motorist ended with the driver of the car being shot in the head and the officers involved facing charges of reckless endangerment. 

In Roubaix, just south of the Belgian border, there was trouble after an illegal urban rodeo was shut down by police. The interior ministry announced this week that 2,200 people taking part in these half-crazed displays of reckless bravado have been arrested so far this year and 1,800 souped-up motorcycles seized. To date, two rodeo riders have died this summer and a number of spectators, including two children, have been hospitalised. 

In Paris, meanwhile, further details have emerged of the extent of the friendship between former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife and Patrick and Isabelle Balkany, who, notoriously, ran the wealthy suburb of Levallois as their private fiefdom for 30 years only to end up in jail for fraud and tax evasion. In an interview with Le Parisien, Isabelle Balkany, 74, revealed that Madame Sarkozy, the singer and model Carla Bruni, had often visited her in jail and recently presented her with a luxury tea set made by Hermès. 

It was left to Le Monde, in full high-summer mode, to analyse the importance to another former President — Jacques Chirac — of the right pair of glasses. It turns out that Chirac changed his spectacles almost as often as he changed his shirt, always trying to look cool and to keep up with the latest fashion. Impressed by the “combat glasses” worn by his haughty predecessor, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, he first experimented with black, Harry-Palmer-style frames that gave him a “young wolf” appearance. Later, he went for thin wire frames, horn rims, tortoise-shell, round, square, half-moon, and even no frames at all, all from the most expensive designers, including Dior and the bespoke Maison Bonnet.

Oddly, given his optical proclivities, Chirac was rarely photographed in public wearing glasses. Only in old age, facing charges of embezzlement (of which he was subsequently convicted) and wishing to look vulnerable did he stare out at the world through thick “Mr Magoo” specials. 

At least, Chirac had two functioning eyes, unlike Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front and father of Marine Le Pen, who lost an eye following a camping accident. For some years, he wore a piratical black patch. Supporters who might have supposed he had lost an eye fighting with the Foreign Legion were not routinely disabused of the fact, but in the end, their hero was persuaded that a replacement glass eye made him appear more presidential.

These days, aged 94, Le Pen wears regular spectacles, with a single prescription lens. He could, of course, have opted for a monocle, giving him the jaunty air of a comedy Nazi. But that would have been too extreme even for him.