Garlic & Pearls

Suzanne takes a punt at the 2025 Christmas No1 and crowns 1984 as the very best vintage of British Christmas charts; Muriel explains how and why the French Christmas No1, a 'secular carol' by venerated crooner Tino Rossi, remains unchanged since 1946. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more ...

In which Suzanne unearths the story of a major British hobby and its relationship with landscape and the romance of the past. Why are the British obsessed with metal detecting? What is their Arthurian code of practice? What are portable antiquities? Who are the night hawkers? What does all this reve...

Muriel tackles an awkward truth: the French may love rigour and rationality – France is the nation of Descartes, after all – but they are also susceptible to the allure of psychics, the alignment of the stars, and angels calling on the phone from beyond. How has this survived the advent of the Enlig...

In which Suzanne investigates profound differences between our two cultures by asking why the British tax year is not, like in France, aligned onto the calendar year. The answers, which astonish Muriel, are deeply rooted in Britain's relationship to the Continent. It's a story of mathematics and ast...

In the second half of our theatrical diptych, Muriel tells Suzanne about the 'atomic bomb' of the French theatre, an experimental Absurdist masterpiece by Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco that became a classic of the French stage. It has neither plot nor psychology – only a lot of uneasy co...

Suzanne and Muriel consider the brilliance, longevity and significance of Agatha Christie's murder mystery play The Mousetrap, which has been running since 1952. Set in a country house isolated by bad weather, the play is a model of distinctly British sweet-and-sour eruption of violence in a cosy se...

It's Halloween and Muriel encourages Suzanne to think about the Gallic bones displayed and staged in the Paris Catacombs in a neo-classical early-19th-century mise-en-scène at once macabre and meditative. We also discover a contemporary underground scene of fun-loving secret explorers and h...

Following on from his book The Discovery of France, Graham Robb has produced another fascinating work of exploration, The Discovery of Britain. Graham's observations are rooted in extensive travel all over both countries on a Victorian invention, the bicycle, reconnecting with old pathways, landscap...

Would you Adam and Eve it? Suzanne tutors her 'old China' Muriel in a coded language that is full of wit, inventions and surprises. Rooted in old street cant and secret words identified in the 1850s, rhyming slang expresses the earthiness and supple playfulness inherent in the ways in which...

Where Muriel explains the mythology of the actress, singer, animal activist and all-round contrarian. How did Bardot re-invent French femininity for the 20th century? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.