Wife reads riot act to Macron in wake of literary lockdown

IT WAS a shared love of literature that brought France’s power couple together.

Now Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron, below, are at loggerheads over France’s love of reading, with the First Lady reportedly insistent that bookshops should remain open during lockdown while her husband has forced them to shut.

With France in confinement since l ast Thursday, the president has ordered all shops selling “non-essential” goods to close for at least a month while leaving supermarkets, wine and household goods stores open.

The decision to count books as “nonessential” in the land of Molière, , Victor Hugo and Jean-paul Sartre has prompted howls of complaint from top authors, uthors, booksellers and publishers, hers, but also placed Mr Macron on on a collision course with th his wife, according to Le Parisien. arisien.

Mrs Macron, acron, “a fan of culture, ure, had hoped that at bookshops would uld be spared from m the lockdown guillotine”, said d the capital’s daily.

Her husband band “supported” t his view until l ast Wednesday when he “changed his mind” after being shown rocketing infection and hospitalisation rates.

Like his wife, Mr Macron is a bookworm. He met her as a 15-year- old schoolboy when she was a French and drama teacher at La Providence, a private school in Amiens, northern France.

During the first national lockdown in March, the French president urged the nation to read, saying it was “essential in the times we’re going through”.

But his decision to impose literary l ockdown has infuriated France’s 3,000-odd independent bookshops, who asked why chain stores selling essential items were allowed to offer books while they had to remain shut except p for “click and collect” orders.

In a letter to the French president published by Le Monde, Ma host of top cultural figures a and writers urged Mr Macron to “ch “choose culture”. All sanitary measures were now in place to ensure the boo bookshop remains “a safe place”, they in insisted. An accompanying peti petition has garnered 185,000 sign signatures.

Meanwhile, a string of provincial m mayors have passed decrees flouting the national ban and authorising s mall shops shops, including bookstores, to reopen.