Peregrinations

Le Mans of the moment

Anthony Peregrine

You may have noticed that François Fillon bounced back to prominence this week. Or maybe not. The ex-PM of France cuts a (deceptively) dry figure. That said, he won the first round of the conservative party primaries by a country mile. He may now take this weekend’s decisive round and so become, in 2017, the next French president. In view of the turmoil on the French Left, the presidential election proper shouldn’t present an insurmountable hurdle.

This will furnish France with her first Thatcherite leader and, given that Mrs Penelope Fillon comes from Llanover, her first Welsh première dame, a development to be welcomed. The world could do with more Welsh women in positions of prominence. Certainly, my Carmarthen grandmother would have licked Europe into shape in short order had she not had her hands full with family and flower-arranging at the chapel.

Mr Fillon’s election will also focus attention on his home region. This is another fine thing, for the unsung Sarthe needs visiting. It’s the rustic county around Le Mans, the city where Mr Fillon was born, educated, and suspended from school for leading a demo against incompetent teaching.

As host to a famous car race, Le Mans also imbued him with a passion for motor sports. But that needn’t detain us. Or me, anyway. Twenty-four hours at unnerving speeds to end up where you started? I don’t have that kind of patience. And, frankly, cars are the least interesting aspect of a town which was, glory be, home to the Plantagenets.

Our Henry II was born there in 1133, in what is now the town hall. Were he to return, he’d still recognise much of what is the loveliest medieval and Renaissance centre in northern France: the stairways from the river, and the cobbled streets, the wonky half-timbered façades, multi-buttressed cathedral where he was christened and Roman city walls already a thousand years old when Henry was a lad. All this, and France’s best potted meat, too: you still need convincing?

We might now follow the former PM downriver to Sablé-sur-Sarthe, a bright-eyed riverside town where he was mayor for 18 years. And on to nearby Solesmes, site of both the Fillon family home, and of the grandiose St Pierre abbey, world HQ of Gregorian chant. Resident Benedictine monks revived medieval plainsong here in the 19th century. Their successors sing it daily at vespers. I went, and came out with a headache. (“Praise the Lord! Migraine for Jesus!” cried my wife.) Musical sensibilities attuned to Joe Cocker were incapable of appreciation of skullcracking monotone melodies.

But you go. You’re certainly more sophisticated than I am. If not, well, you’ll appreciate the rest of the Sarthe – deep green, heavy with shire horses – all the more.