Garlic & Pearls

Lashings of ginger beer all around and nostalgia galore as Suzanne explains the refreshing drink's quasi-parodic Famous Fives connection and unpicks the origins and history of ginger beer, taking in the trading of the exotic ginger root, its feeding into the British obsession with beer, fermenting a...

Muriel faces up to the melancholy that comes to us all towards the end of summer, and find a Gallic expression of it in the 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse, a huge bestseller and succès de scandale set on the French Riviera. The book launched the career of its teenage author Françoise Sagan – herself a...

Suzanne presents Muriel with the magnificent dome of scarlet studded with berries that is summer pudding and reveals the dessert's intriguing origins, which lie in 19th-century hydropathy. What inspired the British to deploy a plain, uncompromising pudding made of bread and native fruit as a health ...

What is the quintessential French summer food? Melon, of course, of the orange-fleshed and deeply aromatic variety. In the summer, Muriel explains, the French go into a sort of melon frenzy, chasing the perfect ambrosial experience, and this brings with it the agony of choice. Selecting the right me...

Can you hear the clarion call of a tinny version of 'Green Sleeves'? That familiar cheery chime is calling us to the ice cream van, plying its way all over the UK in the summer. Suzanne explores its history, its British-American mash-up of creativity, crucial Italian connection, technical chall...

The golden age of topless sunbathing in France lasted a little over a decade, from the 1970s to the tail end of the 1980s. French women pioneered it and were also first to abandon it. But how and why? Muriel retraces the story of a particular aspect of Gallic art de vivre which was highly codified a...

Another case of Suzanne pinpointing the essence of Britain; another first-time taste experience for Muriel! What are scampi fries but fish and chips, pubs and the British seaside holiday all condensed into a tiny mouthful of fishy saltiness. Covering ground from Georgian recipes of Italianate d...

In the wake of the banning of absinthe in France in 1915, a new apéritif was born, redolent with aniseed and liquorice, a taste at once medicinal and full of the joie de vivre we associate with the South of France. But what does 'pastis' mean? Who invented it? In what way did it have political impli...

Muriel tells the story of the stripy Breton top and wonders how a pattern – stripes – once considered sacrilegious and satanic gradually became the epitome of French elegance. We explore the evolving cultural history of a powerful symbol, the role of seaside holidays, of sailor suits as th...

Biros at the ready as Suzanne takes Muriel on a tour of a very British obsession: the pub quiz. Did it begin on a mythical night in Yorkshire in 1946? Is it one of the primary ways in which the British relate to each other socially? And if so, why? Can the Zoom quiz be credited for keeping the natio...