The eurostar slides into Gare du Nord dead on time. Then, chaos: all gates to the station are locked, and the M?tro is stopped. The reason: a contr?leur was stabbed by an enraged passenger. (Why, one wonders, should this happen not in England, but with some regularity in France, where the railways work rather well?) All the cheminots are on a one-day sympathy strike, demanding better protection from a vicious public. At least no one could accuse Paris of being boring.
At the Grand Palais there was the greatest exhibition ever of Daumier, including some fragile clay effigies of French parliamentarians, done while in his 20s-as savage as anything by Spitting Image. Daumier went to prison for caricaturing Louis-Philippe as a pear and narrowly escaped a repeat with his depiction of Emperor Louis Napoleon as "Ratapoil," a broken-down, quixotic dandy. What would he have made of the Labrador-like Chirac?
Across from the Grand Palais stands the Churchill statue, gazing with magnificent defiance towards the Atlantic- "...but westward, look, the land is bright." A block away is Clemenceau, equally defiant, but facing at 90 degrees from Churchill. Does this say something about the perennial divergence of Franco-British views?
Churchill has just been cleaned up from the latest assault by a vandal. This time, daubed in blood-red paint, were the words "Assassin de Mers-el-Kebir" referring to Churchill's decision in July 1940-the grimmest he ever took-to sink the French fleet rather than risk it falling to Hitler.
Every country has its lunatic fringe. What is more encouraging are the enormous crowds being drawn to a play about de Gaulle and Churchill, Celui Qui A Dit Non (playing until February) in the vast Palais des Congr?s, where Robert Hardy gives a superb rendition as Churchill (en fran?ais). To see it was our principal reason for being in Paris.
We lunched with Hardy before the show. "Funny people, these French," he says. "There are 3,500 seats to fill, and I have no understudy at all. So if I fall ill that's the end!" Alarmingly, at lunch he seems to be losing his voice. But on the stage his every Churchill mannerism is perfect; his French rather better than WSC's famous franglais. Equally well cast is Jacques Boudet, the 6-foot-6 French actor who plays de Gaulle, his rigidity embodying that wartime codename, "Ramrod."
Celui Qui A Dit Non tells how, from 1940 to 1945, by saying "Non!" consistently both to Hitler and to his Anglo-Saxon Allies, de Gaulle saved France. Its first scene opens by reconstructing the telephone conversation in which Churchill reports on the sinking at Mers-el-Kebir. De Gaulle loses his temper, but Churchill calms him down by saying: "You'd have done exactly the same thing!" Always the realist, de Gaulle almost certainly would have done; the Parisian audience took it well.
Historically it was hard to fault a line, and Hardy's Churchill, with his humour and warmth, gets much of the applause. In the chilly atmosphere now prevailing towards les rosbifs in France, something as balanced and good-tempered as Celui Qui A Dit Non is most welcome.
This year is the 60th anniversary of the fall of France-and Mers-el-Kebir. And in its infinite wisdom, the Public Records Office chose early January to release some particularly savage references to the leader of the Free French made by Churchill in 1943-4.
Referring to the Anglo-American special relationship, Churchill says: "I should be very sorry to become responsible for breaking up this harmony for the sake of a Frenchman who is a bitter foe of Britain and may well bring civil war upon France." And, quoting Alexis L?ger, pre-war secretary-general to the Quai d'Orsay and a fierce opponent of de Gaulle: "He said de Gaulle was thoroughly unfriendly both to Britain and the US, and that while affecting communist sympathies he had Fascist tendencies. This tallies with my own feeling." Then Churchill himself: "He hates England and has left a trail of Anglophobia behind him everywhere."
Anglo-French diplomacy may face a hard time putting these painful remarks in their proper context. But this needs to be done: 1943-4 was the year when-always passionately fighting France's corner-de Gaulle was causing Churchill the utmost aggravation both in north Africa and the run-up to the liberation. Simultaneously Churchill had on his shoulders the cosmic problems of D-Day, and a much more menacing challenge from Stalin.
Yet Churchill never strayed from his simple conviction that "de Gaulle is a great man," repeatedly championing and defending him from the wrath of Roosevelt-who, at one time, would have had this troublesome Frenchman dispatched to be governor-general of Madagascar. This is well and sympathetically put in Celui Qui a Dit Non.
Meanwhile, just to throw more petrol on the flames, a new and bitterly anglophobe biopic of Joan of Arc, the emblem espoused by de Gaulle in 1940, is playing on the Champs Elys?es. British soldiers in the 100 years war are portrayed as brutal and licentious, precursors of today's football fans.
The legend of the Machiavellian British Secret Service also flourishes. On returning from Celui Qui A Dit Non we were subjected to a barrage on "Princess Dee-Dee" by an irritating Algerian taxi driver. "Of course she was murdered-by Prince Charles," he proclaimed. "And how do you know that?" "Oh, every taxi driver in Paris knows it." The Mohammed Al-Fayed propaganda service has done a good job.
