Garlic & Pearls

Café waiters are omnipresent in French life and in French culture as a sort of regiment – serried ranks of men in their black-and-white uniform with tremendous esprit de corps. But who are they really, Muriel asks, and how did they become such stock figures of Frenchness, and even objects of study f...

How to solve a problem like the British weather? It's easy if you invent the right British garment with a French name, whose origins and evolution Suzanne unveils: it's a story of ancient hooded spirits, anoraks, Royal Marines, the great outdoors, textile manufacturing, fashion and practicality, and...

Muriel unravels the reasons why so many film villains happen to be French. From dissolute sophisticates to duplicitous manipulators and downright sadistic megalomaniacs, what do these colourful imaginary French figures tell us about Frenchness? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informa...

Suzanne explores a masterpiece which is 'like being knocked out' – a cri de coeur about downtrodden youth, devastating tragedy and the tyranny of class. But Ken Loach's Kes is also a dream of escape, wondrous lyrical beauty and the call of the wild. And what of A Kestrel for a Knave, the film's sour...

Muriel examines a madly famous succès de scandale. What’s going on in Edouard Manet’s 1863 painting of an outdoors scene featuring four people, one of whom is stark naked? Is it a riddle? A transgressive prank? Napoleon III guest stars as the originator of the offbeat Salon des Refusés, and an enigm...

Suzanne tells Muriel a very British story of surprise global success, which began at a shooting party in 1951 with a dispute over the speed of a golden plover. A dramatic cast of fact finders and record breakers includes Guinness Brewery managing director Sir Hugh Beaver, identical twins of exceptio...

Why does 'Brittany' (in local dialects Breizh and Bertègn) sound so much like 'Britain'? Because this Western region of France, once known as Armorique, was profoundly shaped by an influx of 5th-century Celt migration from the British Isles. One of the six Celtic nations, it represents an enmeshing ...

Suzanne moves the goalposts and gives football the Garlic & Pearls treatment: it's a story where passions run high, from obsessive devotion to dogged attempts to ban the sport, whether because of its riotous violence of because it's deemed unsuitable for ladies. A cast of colourful characters ke...

Oh là là! From the Belle Epoque to the Jazz Age rose famous French brothels such as Le Chabanais, the One Two Two or the Sphynx. This vanished world, its outlandish themed rooms and enigmatic army of female denizens, live on in the iconography that they inspired and that remains forever wedded to Fr...

Suzanne illuminates the origins and meaning of hallmarking, which began in the 13th century under Edward I – aka Edward Longshanks – as part of his wider effort to stabilise the kingdom by means of statutes. Though the French king Louis IX appears as a guest star, this is a case of Britain ...