What has happened to my beloved France, the country where I spent my childhood summers, studied and worked in my 20s? Once the embodiment of European confidence and cultural supremacy, the land of Voltaire, Bastiat and de Tocqueville is now trapped in an accelerating spiral of decline.
British tourists – some nine million a year – might experience la France profonde, the warm baguettes, contented cows, the exquisite parking. But beneath the idyll lies the reality of a country at war with itself, its government fighting crises on economic, political and social fronts.
