Garlic & Pearls

In a story of sheep, sailors, Royals, Résistants, football fans and actresses, practicality spars with glamour as Suzanne spots Welsh Monmouth caps in Shakespeare and unfurls 15th- and 16th-century Acts of Parliament that may have conditioned the British to reach for their woolly hats, while Muriel salutes the gigantic headgear of Alpine regiments and the French tête à chapeaux (head for hats). Pl...

Fluorescent high-vis clothing - beacon of hope or luminous nightmare? Suzanne has embraced high vis as a liberating garment and analyses its uses in preventing harm and in signalling authority. But is the generalised wearing of it in Britain getting out of hand? Muriel looks through the political prism of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement, which in France appropriated the garment and turne...

Muriel recounts the story of Club Méditerranée, 'the antidote to civilisation' born in traumatised postwar France as a socialist-inflected dream of sporty egalitarianism in the sea and sun, its gradual drift into exoticism leaning into Enlightenment ideas of the state of nature, and its evolution from philanthropic utopia to deluxe multinational business.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priva...

Seasoned camper Suzanne has survived plagues of horseflies and finding ice on the inside of her tent. She revisits memories of the testing, yet strangely enjoyable camping and caravaning trips that the British cherish and retraces the story of the Victorian-Edwardian pioneers to fell in love with camping and rose to the challenge of its practicalities, revealing a surprising ba...

Muriel takes Suzanne back to a time when a coalition of Enlightenment poets and scientists and radical political reformers drew a line under the Ancien Régime and Christianity and imagined a brand new way of thinking about time and the calendar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's D-Day, helmets are glinting and everything hinges on William Marshall – and on formidable Lincolnshire sheriff Nicola de la Haie – as the troops gather on both sides outside Lincoln Castle. Will you, like Suzanne, be heaving a sigh of relief as the covetous French are finally defeated, or bemoan, like Muriel, a tragic missed opportunity? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f...

On the occasion of President Macron's state visit to Britain, Suzanne retraces the background to a momentous clash between France and England – the definitive repelling of the French on 20th May 1217 at the Battle of Lincoln – throwing light on fierce rivalries for succession to the throne of England and for ownership of territories on the Norman side of the Channel, with much switching of allegia...

Muriel takes Suzanne – shaken, not stirred – back to the origins of the odd little yellow bottle, from sun-drenched Algerian orange groves to the smartest Parisian cafés, and into the heart of French escapism Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ahoy! Suzanne sails off to the Spanish Main and the Barbary Coast, introducing Muriel to a cast of buccaneers, corsairs and privateers against a shifting background of enterprise, geopolitics - and marine insurance! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do France's homegrown theme parks tell us about Frenchness? asks Muriel. From the 'ethnographic exhibitions' at the Jardin d'Acclimatation to visionary vulcanologists in the Auvergne and spectacular historical romancing at Le Puy du Fou, controversy looms large! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In time for Wimbledon, Suzanne encourages Muriel to celebrate the British season with a glass of Pimms, and the history, associations and meaning behind it. A tale of gin addiction, oyster houses, fashionable crazes and absurd traditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why does France have ID cards while Britain does not? Muriel unpacks a national narrative of medieval identity theft, Revolutionary ideals of collective nationhood, policing under the German Occupation and contentious 21st-century bilingualism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Britain has a lot of bungalows, but why and how did this begin? Suzanne goes enthusiastically utilitarian and modular and introduces Muriel to the history, charm and meaning of this revolutionary one-storey design, associated with the seaside and hygienic living, with pioneering architects and refinements of snobbery, with the temporary and permanent, and with the topical question of how best to h...

Muriel surprises Suzanne with an enigmatic tea cup covered in fur – the Surrealist object par excellence. Who was Meret Oppenheim, the woman who made it, and what inspired her? This opens up a story of Parisian Surrealism, when a group of artists explored liminal dream-like inspiration in visual arts, writing and film. Why did this happen in Paris specifically? And why did Surrealism never really...

We all dream of the perfect piece of hot toast dripping with butter, but is it ever to be had in this world? Suzanne gives Muriel 9-step instructions on how to make it and, by way of Shakespeare and  The Wind in the Willows , tells the history of the British quest for perfect toast and the development of toasting forks, toast racks and the toaster. A Frenchman, the chef and inventor Alexis So...

Muriel takes Suzanne on a downward journey into the French passion for diving and underwater life. Why was the film The Big Blue such a hit in France? What cult French TV programme about the sea lies beneath it? Why is the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau so revered in France? And deeper still, what iconic submarine novel and archetypal taciturn hero informed it all?  Hosted on Acast. See acast...

Suzanne tells Muriel the riveting story of an invention devised in London by one inspired man, in an 18th-century world of map-making, mezzotints and early industrial machinery, and explores what jigsaw puzzles do for us, what they mean, and why they are more popular than ever.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Muriel tells Suzanne how the French dream of the metric system became realised when the Enlightenment scientists' desire for reliable measurements met the French Revolutionaries' decision to remodel the nation according to Reason.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzanne explores the complex botanical, mythical and poetic aspects of the British bluebell cult. Hope and death, secrecy and display and even asparagus all come into it, and Tilda Swinton, Diana, Princess of Wales and Margaret Thatcher all guest star.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Entente Cordiale! It is, Muriel explains, when at their most conventional that the British are at their most glamorous to French eyes. And we reveal the British winner of the title of Full Cordiale Corker!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzanne digs for the roots of French panache, encountering kingly pageantry, Cyrano de Bergerac and the emblem of the cockerel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Muriel's turn to express admiration of the vivid anarchic creativity of British eccentrics, and to ask if there is something in the water.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzanne's first choice of French word du jour. Vanessa Paradis embodies it. A paradox: there is nothing harder to pull off than insouciance, the art of not caring. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In which Muriel tells Suzanne about the rise and fall of the once ultra-fashionable Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, where, not far from the Moulin-Rouge, the fears of the Belle-Epoque and interwar years – from crazed surgeons and escaped lunatics to the Modern Woman wielding sulphuric acid – were staged with an immersive, hallucinatory intensity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...

Great excitement at Garlic & Pearls HQ: the anniversary of the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain is near. To celebrate, Muriel and Suzanne tell each other what they find most intriguing about each other’s culture! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.