Garlic & Pearls

Muriel tells the story of the stripy Breton top and wonders how a pattern – stripes – once considered sacrilegious and satanic gradually became the epitome of French elegance. We explore the evolving cultural history of a powerful symbol, the role of seaside holidays, of sailor suits as the preferred outfits of smart children, and the formalisation of the uniforms of the French Navy...

Biros at the ready as Suzanne takes Muriel on a tour of a very British obsession: the pub quiz. Did it begin on a mythical night in Yorkshire in 1946? Is it one of the primary ways in which the British relate to each other socially? And if so, why? Can the Zoom quiz be credited for keeping the nation together during Covid? Are the best pub quizzes, Suzanne asks, ultimately where the British sense...

With French historian Charlotte Faucher as her guide, Muriel explores the madly ornamental pink-brick Art Deco wonder that is the French Cultural Institute in South Kensington. Though the building dates from 1939, the idea of setting up a French Institute in Britain as a gateway to a better understanding between our two nations arose in 1910, the brainchild of Marie d'Orliac, an enigmatic figure w...

This episode, full of suspense and mystery, is brought to you by the letter J! In the English language, the letter and its distinctive sound are deployed in their glory, whereas the French soften the letter J (as in je or bijou). The letter's story, which comes to full expression in 1629, is bound with that of the printing press. Who invented the letter J? Suzanne retraces the evolution of this ex...

In 1910, Paris was an ultra-modern electrified metropolis at the height of its confidence, insouciance and triumphant glamour. Then came the winter rains, and the Seine began inexorably to rise, causing chaos and devastation. Parisians living near the river soon found themselves getting about the streets in rowing boats and on improvised wooden walkways. The man of the moment was the then prefect...

Starting with the glorious 1934 novel The Nine Tailors by queen of crime Dorothy L. Sayers, set in the mystical, liminal landscape of the Fens and in the haunting world of ancient bell ringing, Suzanne explores the English art of campanology. Ringing in rounds requires intense mental and physical discipline – in the novel, the intrepid Lord Peter Wimsey rings bells for nine hours solid – and this...

Suzanne and Muriel welcome as a special guest the food writer and journalist Debora Robertson. a perceptive observer of French village life in the South-West – and the French psyche – in her Substack, Lickedspoon. She describes what it's like to be an exotic Brit in the French countryside and shares on-the-ground anecdotes about French behaviour. We find out which is more important, croi...

How, wonders Suzanne, did Britain come to gift the Big Z to the entire world? And how did Britain become a place where pedestrians can expect, in most cases, to find a crossing in the right place? The presence of zebra crossings is the fruit of a long evolution involving bitter parliamentary debates and the tension between limiting speed and protecting an Englishman's freedom of the highway. We me...

Muriel and Suzanne raise a shaken, not stirred pickled-onion-and-Orangina cocktail to toast a vintage episode of the podcast. Now 100 hours into exploring Britishness and Frenchness, they each select their 5 favourite episodes presented by the other and reflect on what they have discovered along the way. An overflowing cornucopia of garlic, pearls, revelations, surprises and cultural aperçus, this...

Muriel wonders why the May 68 uprisings happened so expansively and explosively in the France of De Gaulle and not in Howard Wilson's Britain. She takes Suzanne back to a time of flying cobblestones and bourgeois Maoist students on the barricades. What triggered the events, what fanned the fire? How much of a revolution was May 68, really? What political and social fracture has it left in French s...

Suzanne takes Muriel on a journey to a faraway land, travelling into the hidden depths of a dinner plate. Its famous pattern – trees, a pagoda, a bridge, a boat, a fence – tells a version of Romeo and Juliet's story set in Imperial China. The plate was first made in England in the 18th century, but the story and its memorable characters – an eminent mandarin, his beautiful daughter, an ardent youn...

In France, a country with a multiplicity of cheeses, only one achieves national unity: the humble Vache qui rit – or Laughing Cow. But what are the origins of this product? Invented in the wake of the Great War as a trailblazing 'fromage moderne', it shares a terroir with the more prestigious Comté, which is also one of its ingredients. Paradoxically, Muriel suggests, this processed melted cheese...

An imposing stag stands in a dramatic landscape, in a famous painting hanging in pride of place in the National Scottish Gallery. But what are we really looking at, asks Suzanne. An accomplished oil painting by a Victorian master? A great icon for Scotland? Is is the painting a case of cultural appropriation and the encapsulation of 'Balmorality'? Does it matter if Landseer lost his head to the ro...

What makes a garden distinctly French? A geometrical layout, straight lines of regular topiary and not a hair out of place! How, Muriel asks, did the  jardin à la française  develop as an expression of French thought and sensibility? Together, one man, royal gardener André Le Nôtre, and his king, Louis XIV the monarch absolute, turbo-charged an ornamental tradition imported from Italy to...

There are over a million Labradors in the UK, but where did this sturdy marvel of bright countenance and sweet temper originate? Is it really possible to invent a dog? Yes, says Suzanne, though she concedes that the seed of the Labrador breed came from the now extinct Newfoundland St. John's water dog, with his double layer of fur and his webbed feet. Gasp at the breeding achievements of top sport...

Monocles and canes at the ready! Muriel traces the 19th-century origins of a familiar and somewhat raffish figure of Frenchness. Part boulevardier, part dandy, part poet, the flâneur is a leisurely observer of the urban landscape. But where did he come from? What is his legacy? And can there be such a thing as a British flâneur? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzanne explores the British adoration of the yellow, trumpet-like, optimistic daffodil, the harbinger of spring. The evocative words of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, poetry and prose, bracket this episode, in which we discover that daffodils are also about economics. The UK cultivates 90% of the global daffodil supply. The numbers are staggering: hundreds of millions of flowers are grown a...

Café waiters are omnipresent in French life and in French culture as a sort of regiment – serried ranks of men in their black-and-white uniform with tremendous esprit de corps. But who are they really, Muriel asks, and how did they become such stock figures of Frenchness, and even objects of study for French philosophy? What makes a good café waiter? Is it to do with natural ability, physical fitn...

How to solve a problem like the British weather? It's easy if you invent the right British garment with a French name, whose origins and evolution Suzanne unveils: it's a story of ancient hooded spirits, anoraks, Royal Marines, the great outdoors, textile manufacturing, fashion and practicality, and – in a surprising twist – anti-Republican conspiracies in 1930s France. Hosted on Acast. See acast....

Muriel unravels the reasons why so many film villains happen to be French. From dissolute sophisticates to duplicitous manipulators and downright sadistic megalomaniacs, what do these colourful imaginary French figures tell us about Frenchness? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzanne explores a masterpiece which is 'like being knocked out' – a cri de coeur about downtrodden youth, devastating tragedy and the tyranny of class. But Ken Loach's Kes is also a dream of escape, wondrous lyrical beauty and the call of the wild. And what of A Kestrel for a Knave, the film's source novel, and its revered author Barry Hines? What do they tell us about how a story rooted in South...

Muriel examines a madly famous succès de scandale. What’s going on in Edouard Manet’s 1863 painting of an outdoors scene featuring four people, one of whom is stark naked? Is it a riddle? A transgressive prank? Napoleon III guest stars as the originator of the offbeat Salon des Refusés, and an enigmatic life model breaks the fourth wall. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzanne tells Muriel a very British story of surprise global success, which began at a shooting party in 1951 with a dispute over the speed of a golden plover. A dramatic cast of fact finders and record breakers includes Guinness Brewery managing director Sir Hugh Beaver, identical twins of exceptional retentive memory Norris and Ross McWhirter, and Presidents of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuham...

Why does 'Brittany' (in local dialects Breizh and Bertègn) sound so much like 'Britain'? Because this Western region of France, once known as Armorique, was profoundly shaped by an influx of 5th-century Celt migration from the British Isles. One of the six Celtic nations, it represents an enmeshing of our two cultures and isn't quite part of mainstream France. Muriel narrates the region's turbulen...

Suzanne moves the goalposts and gives football the Garlic & Pearls treatment: it's a story where passions run high, from obsessive devotion to dogged attempts to ban the sport, whether because of its riotous violence of because it's deemed unsuitable for ladies. A cast of colourful characters keep the ball moving: Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, the five-foot-tall Lady Florence Dixie and her...