First ladies know how to read the national mood correctly
Atouch of domestic disharmony at the Elysée Palace, where Brigitte Macron’s office, described by an official as “the department of tears”, is besieged by distraught representatives from the cultural sector, urging her to persuade the French president to exempt them from a second lockdown. Mme Macron, a former literature teacher, had argued the case for bookshops to remain open, only for the president to decide that they must join the category of “nonessential” businesses.
It is not only across the Elysée dinner table that Emmanuel Macron is having his ear bent on behalf of bookshops. Le Monde published an open letter signed by 250 cultural heavyweights, including the Nobel prizewinner, Patrick Modiano, who urged him to follow the example of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland, and keep bookshops open. François Hollande, the former president, joined the chorus of admonition, arguing that “when we no longer have the freedom to move, we must have the freedom to think, to read. It is part of our heritage”. Meanwhile the refuseniks of the Académie Goncourt – the Gallic equivalent of the Booker – have refused to award their annual prize, due to have been announced tomorrow, so long as bookshops remain closed.
All of which leaves the president facing a brace of unpalatable alternatives: he could execute a humiliating U-turn, or risk being remembered as the Grinch who sacrificed his nation’s cultural heritage to a virus. Either way, he has contrived to cede the intellectual high ground to the preposterous figure of Mr Hollande, whose main claim to literary fame until now was as the subject of a sulphurous memoir by his former partner, Valérie Trierweiler. All of which suggests (and it is a message not lost on US
President-elect Joe Biden, who is also married to a literature teacher), that when it comes to staying in touch with the national mood, it is worth listening to your wife.
Covid has found many ways to place a strain on domestic life: Fiona Shackleton, the celebrity divorce lawyer, recently compared the pandemic to Christmas for its combustible effect on marriage. By contrast, the pro-marriage charity, the Marriage Foundation, claimed that “on the whole, marriages have blossomed through lockdown”. The couples counselling charity, Relate, suggests that the truth lies somewhere in between.
In our house, where we are still mostly on speaking terms, it is the smallest things that have proved most incendiary. So here’s my tip for lockdown harmony: if you accidentally smash some fragile object unaccountably cherished by your partner, resist the temptation to say, “I’ll get you another one”, if it was last manufactured in 1896. You’re welcome.
The Surrey borough of Elmbridge, once home to the radical 17th-century Diggers movement, now a haven for celebrity residents, including a formidable roster of rock stars, sporting heroes and media types, has rejected plans for a retirement village, claiming an influx of oldies would undermine the area’s “vitality”.
It depends, I suppose, what you mean by vitality. Given the inspiring influence in the miserable past year of such figures as Dame Judi Dench, at 85 the star of lockdown Tiktok videos, Captain Sir Tom Moore, 100, and the Queen, 94, Elmbridge might want to reconsider its definition.