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[00:00:21] Hello, this is Garlic and Pearls with Muriel Zagha, the Frenchie, and me, Suzanne Raine, who is British. And this podcast explores the vast, deep gulf between British and French culture and general attitudes to life. Today it's the French, well actually Muriel, it's the French in London. It's the French in London. It's the sort of French mothership in London.
[00:00:50] This is what the episode is about, Suzanne. Today's episode is about a house in South Kensington, to be precise, which is the Institut Francais du Royaume-Uni. So that's the French Institute of the United Kingdom. And I went there without you. I went there as a Garlic and Pearls envoy to meet our guest, Charlotte Fauché, who's another French person, another French expat like me.
[00:01:17] She teaches at Bristol University within the Modern Languages faculty, but she's a historian. And Charlotte knows all about the history of the French Institute. That is her area of speciality. It is a fascinating place of French soft power. And we know, don't we, how important soft power is. You've been there, haven't you? You have been there a few times. I've been there a few times, sometimes with you, sometimes not with you.
[00:01:44] And I'd say it is a really interesting, quite exclusionary bastion of Frenchness in London. And one of the things that I find most excluding is that it's not actually possible for a normal British person to say its name. That's clever, isn't it? We've worked that out. So we're forced to try and say it in a kind of... Faltering...
[00:02:11] Institut Francais. Yes, it never sounds quite right. Oh no, it's terrible. I know, it's really difficult. So it is, you're right, it's a sort of bastion, isn't it? Because the French consulate is around the corner from it. And also the French lycée, which is called Charles de Gaulle. More of him later in this episode. Oh, can hardly wait. Yes, I know, I know. And so I've been there a lot of times because I am French. And so like, you know, a horse to the stable, I tend to head for the Institute often.
[00:02:39] And I'd never really thought about how long it had been there, how it had come to be, whose idea it had been to found it. You know, you take these places for granted. And so Charlotte Fauché was excellent because she knows absolutely everything. So let's go to my report, Suzanne. We started, she and I started outside the building. And she helped me to focus on it properly because it is a rather unusual building.
[00:03:07] Charlotte, you and I are standing outside the Institut Francais du Royaume-Uni in South Kensington. And I'm looking up at really quite an astonishing building. I think, you know, often when I come here to see a film and I'm rushing. And so I will rush inside and I don't look up. But actually, I would say it's really worth looking up because it's so amazing. Could you describe the house?
[00:03:33] Yeah, I think also it stands out because we are in a street of white townhouses, you know, these typical townhouses that you see in London. And we're standing in front of a red brick building. And the bricks, you might think they are slightly different from the usual red bricks that you see in other sort of houses in the UK. They're actually French. Are they? The bricks are French. Yes. Brilliant. Of course, the best bricks are French, famously.
[00:03:59] The French Chamber of Commerce in London demanded that because the French government was paying for this building in the 1930s, surely the material ought to be shipped from France. That's brilliant. That's protectionism for you. It is. Wonderful. More of this, please. So the bricks are quite small, red bricks, and they are actually all kinds of different shapes and sizes and compositions, geometric compositions.
[00:04:27] There's some sort of vertical, horizontal. It's a very textured facade. Yes. Yeah, you're right. And the geometry of the facade, also with the glass and the column over there with some more arabesque design, is also what makes the building an art deco building that really does stand out in the street. So what year was this built? It was inaugurated in 1939. Right.
[00:04:55] And you can imagine that a few months afterwards with the outbreak of the Second World War, the 1939 inauguration was extremely meaningful for both France and Britain. Of course. At a time when France and Britain were seeing Germany and Italy coming together as these, you know, fascist, powerful countries. Of course. So it was a good reminder of the strength of the alliance, the inauguration of the Institute. So do we know a little bit about the architect? Yes.
[00:05:25] A man. A man, of course. Yes. In the 1930s, he was a very well-established French architect, worked for the French government on a lot of different projects. His name is Patrice Bonnet. He was originally from Toulouse. And as you might know, Toulouse is called the Pink City for the use of red bricks. Oh, of course. So he took, you know, some of his own life and experience of architecture in Toulouse into this building here. So it's a little bit of Toulouse woven into this building as well.
[00:05:55] Exactly. And so did he have a brief or did he just follow his own inspiration with this? Did he? I'm not sure actually. Yeah. This is a good question. I haven't found a brief. I mean, I suppose this was quite fashionable, but avant-garde. Yes. I mean, he wasn't a very daring architect because he was, you know, from the establishment working at Versailles, for example, as head architect.
[00:06:21] So he very much stayed in line with the main thought of the time. And conservation as well. Yes. Architectural conservation. Shall we walk down the side here just for a moment? Yes. I mean, the brief was to make the building looks French. Yeah. So it does say in... So what is this? Is it a little bit... And it says it on the tin. Institut Francais. Francais. Is that concrete, that grey? Or is it stone? We're not sure.
[00:06:50] But it does spell out the words Institut Francais against, again, each letter, against the geometric background and with a sort of wavy, vaguely like water, evocative of water, flowing water, maybe a little frame around each letter. And then we have columns. Mm-hmm. And they're like almost like woven... Yeah, like a woven basket. Yeah. Something like wicker or something like that. Again, very ornamental. And as you said, you said the word arabesque.
[00:07:18] So there's something a bit orientalist maybe about the inspiration. Which you find in some of the churches in Toulouse that have this sort of more rich inspiration. Yeah. Some detractors of the building called it the French-Turkish Bath. And that was not a compliment. No. But it does mix various influences. Yes. And at the top, so we have a series of windows of stained glass windows, which I think then look into the library. Yes.
[00:07:48] Which we'll see later. And above, there's quite tall and slightly church-like windows actually. Slightly evocative of church architecture, elongated windows. I mean, there is a church in Toulouse that really does look like this building. Really? Yes. Okay. So with fenêtres en eugive, I think they're called. Exactly. And then above that, I can see four medallions with three animals and a branch. Olive branch. Olive branch. Okay.
[00:08:12] Which in 1939 is obviously deeply meaningful given that Europeans are scared that a war might happen. Might happen and did of course happen. Yeah. And then there's a cockerel. The cockerel, symbol of France and power. Yes. And then a snake. A snake, which if some of your listeners are French or have been in France, they might have seen at the top of chemists. Symbol of science. Symbol of science. And then an owl. Knowledge. Knowledge. Wonderful. So all the good things.
[00:08:40] So it promises quite a lot, this facade. Exactly. This building was inaugurated in 1939 at the same time as the school was in France. Yes, that's right. So if we walk around again… And you actually used to be able to go from the institute into the school. Into the school directly. Because it was the one and same institution. They parted ways in the post-war period and have different budgets, etc. But they were a different design. And then competing in different administrations.
[00:09:09] But initially it was one… Here we can see the edge of the… Of Bonnets. Is it called Bonnets? Yes, Patrice Bonnets. A Patrice Bonnets building. And then there's a more recent extension that was added, I'm guessing in the 50s, 60s maybe. And then beyond that, we can see quite a handsome grey brick facade with some red brick ornamentation. And that was the original… That is the original school. School.
[00:09:37] I mean, not original from the First World War. No. Because you… As we'll discuss, the school was created in the First World War. And both the institute and the school were in a different location in Marble Arch. Right, okay. But yes, in the 1930s that was the original school, the site for the school. And this bit was designed by a British architect, Albert Thomas, who was part of RIBA, the Royal Institute for Architecture in the UK. Okay.
[00:10:05] And the press thought that the relationship and the fact that these two institutions created one design by a French man, the other by a British architect was a wonderful symbol of the Entente Cordiale, of this friendship between France and the UK. Okay. When you look at letters, the two men just could not stand on another. They hate each other, actually. Because they had different ideas about architecture. The relationship was quite tricky, yes.
[00:10:32] To just come together and agree on a building. And you can tell that both buildings look absolutely very, very different. Well, I'm looking at both and I can see that the… What's the name of the British architect? Albert Thomas. Albert Thomas' building is sort of neo-Georgian, maybe. Very austere, that great sort of pared down, classic British architecture. Whereas this building is a bit mad.
[00:10:57] I mean, it's, you know, it's full of, I would say, fioriture, lots of ornamentation, that amazing sort of fusion of all the influences. And it's possible that Bonnet was actually a very restrained man, but it feels in the context of the street where we are, like a slightly mad statement. Yeah. So I can imagine at the time that to the English architect, it might have been difficult to be… Like they were shackled together. It must have been difficult.
[00:11:27] But eventually, the two buildings were built. Yes. It was all fine. And actually now, with the passage of time, it all looks pretty good. Yes, yes. Yeah, it looks pretty good. I do agree that you tend to miss the facade and what the details when you come into the Institute because of how the streets, you know, now looks light. You aren't able to stand and like look up when you walk in the street, but yes. Because it used to be a bit more dégagé. That's right.
[00:11:56] There was more, the access was more open around it initially. That's it, yes. So you would have had a more comprehensive view of it. Whereas now we have a more partial view. No, no, that's great. Fantastic. Super interesting. Well, let's go inside. Yes, let's go. And so we're standing together in the lobby of the Institute. And in front of us on the wall, I can also hear the, some of the students at the Lycée Francais, which is just next door.
[00:12:26] The Lycée Francais, which is called Charles de Gaulle, of course. On the wall in front of us, there are two memorial plaques. And I wonder if you would mind reading out the one at the top. What does it say? Read it out in French? Yes. Let's have some French.
[00:13:01] So that's beautiful. So I'm going to translate it very quickly. It says, to the memory of Madame Normane Beaune, née Marie-Jeanne Dorliac, who at the age of 20 years old, 20 years old, founded in 1910 the Institut Francais du Royaume-Uni to encourage rapprochement, I think we can say, and cultural entente, we can keep a lot of French words, between France and Great Britain.
[00:13:25] This Institute keeps with gratitude the memory of her enthusiasm and her message. It's astonishing to begin with that it's a 20-year-old woman who is behind the creation of this place. So over to you. Tell me a bit about Marie-Jeanne Dorliac, who she was. Well, can I start with a 20-year-old? Yes. Because actually, that's a lie. She loved to lie about her age.
[00:13:51] And journalists went along, you know, willingly, because obviously that's very impressive to say you're a 20-year-old. She liked to say she didn't speak English, but she'd learned English as a pupil in France and at university. So it was really interesting to do a biography because you had to find out a lot about what was actually true. There's another important bit of misinformation in that plot. It's in her name, actually. The D-apostrophe.
[00:14:20] She went, before she married the Norwegian Norman Bonn, she went by the name of Marie Dorliac with a D-apostrophe. And obviously, as you might know, the D-apostrophe signifies nobility. Yeah, like D-apostrophe if the name begins with a vowel. Exactly. But it signifies, yes, noble families. Just like in German, Fon. Yeah. So that, you know, that brings this connotation of a family from high society.
[00:14:49] She didn't have the D-apostrophe in her name when she was born in her birth certificate. She only started to use this name Dorliac with the particle when she started to write to the French ambassador, who at the time was Paul Combon, a very illustrious French ambassador to the UK. Because she wanted to fit in in this world, she was trying to create the word around the French Institute. So that's two things. She was, she was young. She wasn't 20 when she opened the Institute.
[00:15:19] She was in her early twenties, nonetheless. So it's still a very impressive achievement. And so Marie Orliac or Marie Dorliac came to the UK as a governess, like so many French women did around the time or just after the Anton Cordial in 1904. And then she was appointed to three different schools, which is very impressive. And actually she was really overworked when she was in her early twenties. She worked at Hampstead High School for Girls, which is a school that still exists today.
[00:15:49] She also worked in adult education at Morley College. Again, that's still the place. Yeah, I know Morley College. Still running. And she was an assistant at the French department at Bedford College, which is the oldest college of higher education for women. So she was doing a lot of work for adult education, but also girls and women's education, something that she carried forward when she opened the French Institute in 1910. And so what gave her the idea, do you think? How did she think?
[00:16:18] We need something. We need an organization, I suppose, a formal organization. Yeah, so I think she saw an audience. The way she got the idea of the institute, we're not sure because as many women who went into diplomacy, she never left her memoirs. It's very striking when you're a historian to see so many memoirs and oral interviews with male diplomats, very few with women. So it's difficult to trace the kind of intellectual origin of the place.
[00:16:47] Nonetheless, before she opened this institution, she was engaged in a Parisian institution that was called the Université des Amales, which had networks throughout the world and that was organizing sort of lectures for upper class women. In London, she organized lectures with writers, intellectuals, politicians, also at the Ritz that attracted a very cosmopolitan European upper class audience with ambassadors coming in.
[00:17:16] So I suspect that's how and when she met the French ambassador to the UK. And you can find her letters now at the French Diplomatic Archive saying, right, this is the institution I want to create. She also called it at first a university. Yes. It was a university only in name because she wasn't bestowing degree certificates like a standard university would have done at the time already.
[00:17:42] But it was this university for upper class women that she wanted to create in London that then became the French Institute a few years later. It's very interesting that the idea for the Institute comes hand in hand with promoting women's education. I mean, the beginnings. So really promoting women's education to begin with for people who have the leisure and perhaps greater access to culture. Yes. Rather than university for all women. Yes.
[00:18:11] So it wasn't a popular university like some female anarchists were doing at the same time in London. Because these also existed and they are an equally fascinating topic. You're right to say that the women who attended the classes, the day classes at this University of French Arts, which was the original name of the French Institute, were women belonging to the upper classes who lived in London. It was a sort of finishing school, really. Right.
[00:18:36] At the time, you know, the British aristocracy might have sent their daughters to Switzerland to finish in school or to some, you know, private setting in the UK. Of course, many women would have also been home educated. And so it was coming to the University of French Arts was an opportunity for them maybe to mingle, meet others belonging to the same social class.
[00:18:59] And when you look at the early leaflets of these University of French Arts, you have fees for people who have countryside homes and are not in London for the whole duration of the season. OK. So you get an understanding of the sort of people who might have been attending these classes and all of them would have been girls. But in the evening, there were lectures and events that were open to both men and women.
[00:19:25] OK. And so then we move on, I guess, to the building itself. So this building where we're standing today was open in 1939. By that point, Marie Orliac was out of the picture. Actually, very, really rapidly, the French government realized that there was a real potential to having an institution that promoted French culture. Yeah. But they didn't have the same understanding as Marie Orliac.
[00:19:50] So how Marie Orliac was excluded was both because of a clash in understanding how to use French culture in the UK, but also because really rapidly she ran out of money to pay for the teachers, etc. So she turned to the University of Lille. Right. At the time in France, most universities would have had a sub-annex abroad in the form of a French institute.
[00:20:14] So Lille was trying to do exactly what the University of Bordeaux or Grenoble or Paris had been doing with St. Petersburg, Madrid or Florence, which were the three cities where the original French institutes were created. Okay. And when she started talks with academics in Lille, they saw this opportunity to open an annex of the University of Lille.
[00:20:38] So that's when Marie Orliac's own university became a French institute just before the outbreak of the First World War. Okay. And what about this we can hear increasingly, I think it's recreation time maybe. It's recess, so we can hear children in the Cours de Recreation of the Lycée Chambre Gaulle next door. The school then, was that, when did the lycée open? Was that also something that happened as part of the same vision? Yeah.
[00:21:06] So the school opened during the First World War. Right. It was actually a very different vision, but also a project supported by Marie Orliac. It was entirely her own doing. And she was very good at finding people with money to support our ideas. So she wrote to some of the wealthy Londoners that she'd been in contact with to create the French Institute to say,
[00:21:32] there are hundreds of Belgian children refugees in London in 1914, 1915. These children are struggling to find Francophone schools. Yes. What can we do? Yeah. And because she was at the head of the French Institute, she decided to add a section or department to the French Institute. So there was a department for lectures, there was a department for social events, and she added a department for schools. Okay. Amazing. What was, do we know?
[00:22:02] I mean, I don't know because I don't know how much written stuff you found, but do we know about her own family background? Do we know where she was? She came from, what her family was? Yeah. So again, more lies to entangle. More legends. But that was really fun. A lot of detective work to be doing. She was born in the Auvergne from a family of school teachers. Officially to the press, she would say that her father was a professor of mathematics,
[00:22:29] but she was from a middle class family in rural France in the Auvergne. After that, Suzanne, Charlotte and I sort of floated up the staircase, which is quite grand. And we looked down into the building's Art Deco lobby. Find out what we saw after the break. We've gone upstairs, Charlotte. We're now on the first floor.
[00:22:54] And we can see there's a lovely Art Deco lobby with a glass wall. I mean, how would you describe this sort of, with glass panes? There's a geometrical pattern. Thank you. With the other square and some rounder shapes that cut through. And it's very light. Every room is in that staircase.
[00:23:17] When the architect thought about the space, he wanted it to be a place to showcase French art. Ah. With this idea. I don't know how you felt when you came into the building. With the idea that when you see French art, you feel France. Yes. Did it work on you? Always. I always feel France, personally. Okay. But... So there is only, sadly, one remaining piece of art from the inauguration in 1939.
[00:23:46] This is this cast here by Rodin, which is called L'Air des Rens. So it's a male nude. Exactly. It used to be surrounded by three other equally imposing statues. Actually, even larger statues. But I haven't been able to find out where they've been. Oh, okay. It's not something that you can easily take away. No.
[00:24:09] And the archives of, you know, work of art are usually well kept by the Ministry of Culture. So maybe one day I'll just find it. So somewhere in the world there are these two other statues? Yes. Okay. Well, we're just putting out a little appeal. Because the Institute would probably quite like to have them back.
[00:24:30] But throughout the years and the decades, the Institute added more work of art, I guess, in the spirit of what the architect Patrick Bonnet wanted in the interwar period. So here you can see a tapestry by Sonia Delaunay. So this is the Sonia Delaunay. She was an artist who she painted, but she also designed clothing. I believe textile. And so this tapestry, which is lovely, is a sort of geometric. Yeah.
[00:25:00] So it's a bit sort of constructivist, isn't it? It's a semi-circles and a lot of geometrical shapes, but in lots of vibrant colors. And that was her thing. She's a great colorist, Delaunay. Yeah. And I guess because the rest of the hallway and the staircase is so white and black. Yeah. It is very striking, isn't it? It's certainly, it says to me, light and modern. And at the time would have seemed probably quite a modern space.
[00:25:28] Even with the Rodin, before we get on to Delaunay, I think the geometry, the light, the monochrome, the elegance, the austere elegance is very out-deco, isn't it? Yeah, it's lovely. Then we went into the library upstairs in the Institute. And this is when Charlotte told me about another important period of history, the Second World War, and about the links between the Institute and the free French.
[00:25:56] So we're now in a different part of the Institute, Charlotte. We are in what's now the library, Bibliothèque Denis Saurat, Director of the French Institute of the United Kingdom from 1924 to 1946. The library is named after Denis Saurat, who was the director of the Institute between 24 and 46. It's a very striking room. Do you want to describe a little bit what we are looking at here? Well, will you be surprised to know that it was designed as a ballroom?
[00:26:26] Does it make sense if I say that rather than a library? Well, I mean, at the moment it looks like a library because it's lined with bookshelves and it's designed for reading and it has lots of lovely little nooks. I can see a massive chair. They've done a great job turning it. That would be my place of choice to curl up with a book. But I suppose in terms of the ceiling height and maybe those lovely sconces, again, very Art Deco shell-like sconces around the walls,
[00:26:53] and then the almost a bit orientalist, sort of almost like a moucharabier effect of the windows with some pink glass paneling, pink and white or is it light gray? I can't really tell, but just lovely colors. Again, geometric windows, but a little bit orientalist. Perhaps then I can imagine it as a ballroom, although it's a modestly sized ballroom. True. So why is there a ballroom in the French Institute?
[00:27:20] Because of this legacy of thinking about French culture through this high culture, these society events where you needed to have a space to welcome important guests during events and evenings. How lovely. So when did it become a library? Do we know when it was coming? In the 50s. Yes. And it was first a study room, so it would have looked a lot more austere than that.
[00:27:46] There was, you know, as I mentioned, this idea that the French Institute was here for partly social events, but it was also this place of high culture. And the library mostly kind of hosted academics, students, etc. Whereas nowadays everyone can come in. You don't even need to be a member. So if you want to just escape the buzz of South Kensington during opening hours, you can, yes, come in and enjoy the really welcoming armchairs. Yeah. It's a lovely haven here. Yeah.
[00:28:14] And so I suppose that the Second World War was a bit of a break as well in terms of the use of the Institute because of the upheaval of the war. So after the war, then we reassess what the Institute is for maybe and a greater sort of democratic approach. Yes. A slow, not easy reassessment. There was a lot of pushback against, for example, using cinema.
[00:28:40] It was considered as being too vulgar in the late 40s or 50s. Yes. There was a lot of back and forth between some diplomats based in London, others in Paris, about, you know, how to try and open up the program. Because we should say there is now a very active, dynamic cinema called the Ciné Lumière after the Brothers, I'm guessing. And it's got an excellent program and not just a French film.
[00:29:09] It's very, very outward looking. Yeah. So there are lots of interesting seasons. I'm promoting it because I am a film person and this is the mothership to me. So I'm going to say it's really, really worth coming to Ciné Lumière and you don't necessarily need to be Francophone. There are lots of things on offer that are not necessarily in the French language. There are lots of other films being shown. Everything is subtitled. And everything is subtitled anyway. So it's very accessible.
[00:29:32] But you're right that I imagine in the 1940s, 50s, there was still, and maybe that's still a little bit in the French mindset, the high and low culture division, that people thought of cinema as an art populaire. Really. Divertissement, entertainment for the masses. And it was. It was. But then it's also very French to think of cinema as the setième art, the seventh art. Yeah, of course.
[00:30:00] So I think that's particular to us too. Yeah. And now when you think about the importance of cinema for French, you know, what we call French soft power, and this institution is a place of French soft power, it's quite amusing to see this early discussion about the pushback against cinema using cinema. Because it was perceived as vulgar or… Yes. Not attracting perhaps the right crowd. Not attracting the right crowd, I think, is a really good way to put it. So there's a degree of snubbery there. Yes, absolutely. Certainly.
[00:30:30] There were certain establishment figures thinking, well, do we want a lot of ordinary people to come to this house? And speaking about snubbery, there is also now downstairs a cafe in the interwar period. There was also a cafe at one point. And the head of the institute wanted to close it because that would look like too much like Montmartre, attracting, you know, maybe Bohemian students to the French Institute.
[00:30:58] There were also people also, you know, working for the institute, we're saying, well, we need to think about how we can attract younger students, people who are learning French. They are really the ones who will benefit from coming to the institute. But the cafe was a big question mark. And I think nowadays it works really nicely, as far as I can tell. Well, it's wonderful. There's a fantastic cafe now. But I love the idea that we have to defend ourselves against Montmartre's associations. Yes.
[00:31:23] Given that this is one of the big poles of attraction to this day, I think part of the mythology of France is to do with Montmartre and the cabaret. Yes. And cafe society, of course. But because of these academic origins of the French Institute and this connection with the University of Lille, you'd be a student at the institute working towards a degree. There were also evening classes, but most of the formal classes were for degrees in law and literature bestowed by the University of Lille.
[00:31:53] You know, there would have been award ceremonies with deans, etc. So this crowd that they, you know, use this metaphor of Montmartre and we don't want a Montmartre crowd. That's quite a step away from what they were envisioning. So with the Second World War, Charlotte and the Free French and the French presence in South Kensington, there's a pub in Soho called the French House. Do you know it? Yes.
[00:32:21] Where allegedly the Free French used to drink and so it still has a French flag outside and it has all kinds of quirks in the way that they don't serve pints, they serve half pints. I don't know why. I don't know whether that's a French take on beer. But anyway, the French bedded in, in London. And so was the Institute part of their sort of base of operations during the Second World War? Yes. At first, there was no Free France.
[00:32:50] As you said, Dougal did an appeal on the BBC. That was the first act of official resistance or many historians consider this is the first act of resistance on the 18th of June. And as you know, when you're in France, 18th of June isn't a bank holiday, but it's not far from a bank holiday. You will see loads of flags on the town halls. It's a special, sacred day. Yes, exactly. So that day of the appeal is still really meaningful.
[00:33:14] And that evening of the appeal, the director of the French Institute went to find the goal because its address had been publicized in the Times. So the director, Denis Soura, went to see the goal to say, I want to join the movement that you're trying to create. Denis Soura, like most French people either in the UK or in France, had not heard the appeal. But because there was evidence of it in daily newspapers, which were published several times a day at the time, went with the goal to meet him.
[00:33:44] And throughout the summer, they met every day. And there's great notes here at the Institute about the meetings from the perspective of the director, Denis Soura. And the goal assigned him to think about the ideas behind free France. The goal was, as you said, a general. He's from, you know, the military. He was a great thinker, but he had a lot of things to, you know, put together.
[00:34:09] So he asked Soura to gather intellectuals, but also to think about the ideas behind the movement. And Soura took this job very much at heart. He wrote a lot about the early days of this free French movement that the goal was trying to create. He also organized the first public lecture with the goal in London to introduce the goal to London audiences. The goal refused to speak. He was in attendance, but he said, I will speak only when the war is over.
[00:34:38] Obviously, he spoke a lot more in between. The restraint of the great man. Exactly. And also his really bad English meant that he was probably not at ease, you know, in July 1940 to speak to several hundreds of British people would come to hear him.
[00:34:55] So, Denis Soura, the director, used the French Institute at first as a propaganda platform for free France to talk about free French ideals, to talk about the war efforts of the free French army that the goal was building together in the empires. And used also the building itself to create newspapers or, you know, the kind of press outlets to speak about the French effort.
[00:35:22] Were most French people in London, in Britain, on the side of the free French automatically or actually were some of them on the side of Vichy, on the side of Pétain?
[00:35:34] Yeah. So there was a substantial pocket of the London French migrant community that was quite in support of Pétain and collaborationist ideas, in part because it took a while for the goal to really publicize his ideas and to make his ideas known outside a very, very, very small circle.
[00:35:57] In the early days, the goal complained a lot to the director of the French Institute that his movement is really small and that no one is interested in it. And it feels really lonely because very few people have joined him. Very few people at the head of French colonies are paying an interest into potentially forming a resistance movement. So the Institute plays a really important role because the director is one of the very few men close to the goal. And who really understood from the beginning. And really got it.
[00:36:27] Yes, and really believed that there was another way of thinking about France at that time in the war. I suppose, I mean, this is a little footnote, but if you think back, de Gaulle was quite a young man. He was 49. Whereas Pétain, Marshal Pétain, who was a marshal, was a war hero in his own right of the Great War. Yes. Of Verdun.
[00:36:49] So I can imagine how a lot of people who obviously could not foresee the future, you know, we have hindsight, might have thought, well, Pétain is a great man. You know, he's a war hero. Of course, he's going to look after us and look after France. And so it took perhaps a particular kind of shrewdness and a certain kind of patriotism to say no from the beginning. It's worth reminding people how, what a pioneer de Gaulle was. Yes.
[00:37:19] And it was, as you said, you know, it was 49. It was an Andrew secretary. He'd just gotten this very minor government role. So he was, you know, more or less unknown. But in this government role, he'd been working since early June, so only for about 20 days with the British. And that's why he thought London would be a good place. Yeah. Because he built these early contacts with the British government. That's not to say that he had, you know, easy relationship with Churchill afterwards.
[00:37:49] But he had these early contacts that were really important for Free French to settle in Carlton Gardens by St. James Park. And that's still where you can see the statue of de Gaulle today. And to use, you know, buildings such as the French Institute, mostly for postal services. But, you know, very quickly, Carlton Gardens, so the headquarters of the Free French, became too small.
[00:38:13] So using the French Institute and next door the school, the secondary school, because the pupils had been evacuated, was quite ingenious on the part of de Gaulle. Yeah. Brilliant. So you say a slightly tense relationship between de Gaulle and St. Churchill. I think a lot of British people are under the impression that de Gaulle did not like the British very much. Because, you know, he wasn't very keen for Britain to join the European Union.
[00:38:43] I mean, there was a... But I suppose at that time of national crisis, Britain seemed a natural ally to him. We can say that. Yes. Yeah, yeah. For him, that seemed like the place to go. The first kind of port of call. Port of call, exactly.
[00:38:59] Very quickly, de Gaulle understood that for his movement to be potentially acknowledged as a government in exile, just like the Belgian or the Polish governments in London had been by the Allies, he also needed maybe a territory of his own, an army of his own. So the UK, while, you know, very welcoming and including providing money that was essential, perhaps felt a bit too narrow for his ambition.
[00:39:26] So it was really important for de Gaulle also to get support in French colonies, in particular in West Africa. Of course, which played such a pivotal role in the war. The library is dedicated to Denis Soura, who was one of the directors of the Institute. And so he was in charge from 24 to 46. So all the way through the Second World War period. And of course, he got to know de Gaulle quite well.
[00:39:52] Was he always an admirer of de Gaulle? What happened there? Yes. So 1946 is when he actually got dismissed from his job. He would have stayed for even longer. It's quite remarkable that he's been at the head of the French Institute for such a long time. Nowadays, the head of institutes, you know, have a position of diplomats. So they would stay for three, four years. Not 22 years. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:40:20] But he had a very eventful, like most people, eventful Second World War. You actually mentioned that the stained glass are purple and white. And the white bits were replaced after the war because there was a shell that fell around the corner here, near Cromwell Road, and damaged the building. And Soura was actually on site. And Soura was actually hurt by the bombings. And he recovered.
[00:40:50] But before that very sad event, he spent quite a few years being a very vocal anti-Gaulist. So I mentioned that in the summer of 1940, he was one of the first men in London to gather around the Gaulle and support him. And he was extremely active. He was hoping for a political role in free France. And he had won for a very short period of time. But very rapidly because Soura was a very well established academic.
[00:41:17] He had a lot of contact on the BBC, was regularly speaking at the BBC. He had a mind of his own. And he began questioning the political legitimacy of free France and of the Gaulle. Soura was a man of the left. There were many left-wing people in free France. There was also many right-wing people. It was a very diverse, politically diverse movement. But Soura began questioning the military element of free France. And, you know, questioning what about republicanism?
[00:41:45] You know, how are you thinking about democracy in the post-war period? He wrote a lot in national newspapers, in the Times, in the Observers about these issues. And the Gaulle was extremely frustrated. He was blacklisted very rapidly from any events. Of course. So the French Institute came from being a platform for free France and for Gaulism, from what was developing as Gaulism into an anti-Gaulist site.
[00:42:15] It's quite a French story in and of itself, isn't it? That's right. Because the Gaulle, he is our great man in the way that maybe that Churchill is the great man in Britain, but much contested. Yes. Like all great men, I guess. Yeah. And it's interesting to think that he was even contested by people who were fervent resistors, resistant fighters. You know, Soura never thought about Pétain or going towards that direction.
[00:42:42] There were just a lot of people thinking about how to resist against Nazi and against Pétain in a way that was slightly more democratic than what de Gaulle was offering. Slightly more democratic. Yeah, because he was a pretty authoritarian figure. I think we can say that without being too... He was a man from the army. He was, yeah, after all. So I can see how a man of the left, as you say, would have felt in two minds about,
[00:43:10] well, especially as we know how military dictatorships can develop. I mean, I don't think we ever had a military dictatorship in France under de Gaulle, but you can see how there could have been that anxiety. Yes. That once a general gets in power, well... Combined, I think, with personal frustration of seeing other academics get important positions in Free France and Soura not getting to these roles. So not getting to a role like... So there is also that selfish reasoning. Of course. Self-interest, because he never got to say...
[00:43:39] So André Malraux, another intellectual who... Was he Minister of Culture? After the war, yes. After the war. So possibly that's what Denis Soura would have quite liked for himself, this kind of job. Yes. And de Gaulle, because he wanted to create this, you know, this would-be government, he appointed ministers to Free France. So there was a Minister for Education. Soura briefly was Minister for Education on paper. Right. But it was dismissed very quickly.
[00:44:06] No, I understand a bit better the sort of the psychology of the individual in this story. Can we say a little bit more about the French lycée, actually, and how the school developed from being set up by Marie d'Orliac or Orliac or Marie for primarily to... for the needs of Belgian refugees and other Francophone refugees. And now the Lycée Charles de Gaulle is a massive... I mean, it's one of the most prestigious
[00:44:35] French schools in the world. I suppose you and I are perhaps among those French people who did not come as a governess or a nanny or an au pair nowadays. You know, a lot of people come to be au pairs. We came to study and then we stayed. And for a long time, the families who sent their kids to the institut, they would have
[00:44:57] been diplomats, people who were passing through, I guess, and used the lycée as a school for their children for a few years. And then they would move on. Do you think that's still the case? Or is it now a lot of people who actually live permanently here? No, I think the lycée has always been a place for permanent members of the French communities, as well as, you know, diplomats and people working a job like as an expat
[00:45:25] job posted here for a bank or a large company for a few years and going back somewhere else to France. But the French community in London in the early 20th century was quite already large. It was over 20,000 people. There were also schools in Soho. You mentioned, you know, that the French pub in Soho, but there used to be a French hospital as well in Soho that you can still guess that it was there. The sign's still there.
[00:45:53] There's obviously the French Protestant Church and Catholic Church. So the whole Huguenot migrant, the traces of all that, of the exile of the French Huguenots, they settled in Soho mostly. Exactly. So the French community moved from Soho to South Kensington. Right. But there were people from, you know, various social backgrounds sending their kids to South Kensington because it wasn't as expensive as it is today.
[00:46:21] I think today the social composition of the children and the families who are able to afford to send their children to the school, it's not only a fee paying a school, but obviously you can't be living, you know, too far away from South Kensington to commute, especially because the school welcomes children from three to 18. So it's such a large school. That means the social composition is slightly different than it was in the 30s or even in the 50s. And the schools kept quite good records of who attended the school.
[00:46:49] So that's very also insightful. I'm trying to think as we're here in Kensington. So there's the Lycée Charles de Gaulle, there's a French institute where we're sitting now, there's the embassy, the consulate nearby. It's like a little bit of a French quarter and a lot of French families who live in South Kensington, of course. I'm trying to think of an equivalent in Paris where there are lots of British people. And actually, I don't think we, you quite have that, we quite have that in Paris.
[00:47:16] There are a lot of British people who live in Paris and there's a British council, which is the sort of mirror image of this institute. But I can't think of any part, can you? I think the concentration always comes with the schools. And, you know, clearly French people living in West London aren't here for the French institute. They're here for the French school. They are. I believe there's a few British schools in the Marais. Yes. But I think you're right. There is not sort of concentration.
[00:47:43] And the British council does a slightly different job, a really important job in Paris. Yes. But it doesn't have that community feel that the French institute has because it doesn't have its cafe or its cinema or its library. I think it's lost its library. Has it? Yeah. And the library is really important. And so the other thing that's really important here, I'm told, is the language center. So I think a lot of people still come here to learn French. Yes, absolutely. That's one of the big, big draws.
[00:48:10] So it's still working very much in the original, for the original purpose. You're right. That Marie d'Orliac had in her mind of promoting the teaching of French at a high standard. Yes. And Marie d'Orliac really felt that, because she was a teacher, she had this classroom experience. She really felt that the way French was taught in the UK was too abstract.
[00:48:32] And that social events, social relations, concrete examples in the classroom, rather than translation and grammar, was the way forward. And was how British people come to like France. And in her very elitist way of thinking about Frenchness, she also wrote quite an amusing line about how French hairdressers in the UK were wonderful at her time. They had a very good reputation.
[00:48:58] French food also, and still is, an important symbol of France in the UK and in the world. I think a form of soft power. But to her, she said, well, it's not because you like French food that you like France. Whereas if you understand France through its culture and its language, then that's how you will develop this more positive relationship to France. I think that's profound. I think that actually ties in quite nicely with what Suzanne and I try to do in our own small way, following in the footsteps of Marie d'Orliac.
[00:49:28] Maybe I should have a Muriel de Zaga, I think. And a particle as well to ennobel myself. But we do try to give, like concrete examples in the classroom, you said, we do try to give as many concrete examples of things as we can. Because elitist intercultural relationships are fine, but they don't really, they don't make things real and close and intimate and friendly.
[00:49:55] And I think it's really important, perhaps more important than ever in those polarized times, to make people feel something, a closeness to a different culture. Because we are still very different, the British and the French. I don't know, I mean, what's your, just moving on to your experience for a second, Charlotte, sorry to drag you in. But you've lived here now quite a long time, over 10 years. Yes. You've walked around Britain, as it were, you know, culturally.
[00:50:24] Do you feel integrated? Yes. Yes. And do you still feel that there are lots of cultural differences? Do you still encounter those moments of, oh, right, no, we're still very different? I mean, just last Thursday, voting in a church was quite a thing. And it always is, because I've somehow always ended up voting in churches. And I always think, oh, I think Fred Briand would not like that. Exactly. So maybe you can explain that for our listeners a little bit. So that's my reference. Why is it weird?
[00:50:53] Why is it weird to vote in a church for a French person? So I'm referring to the 1905 law of separation between church and state, and that, you know, separation between politics and religious practices. So you would not have, actually it's legal in France to have any sort of political meetings in the church. So this is what we call laïcité. So the secular, well, French secularism, because it's quite particular to France.
[00:51:20] But the complete separation between political public life and religious life. Religious life is private. And you are not, I mean, the idea, I agree with you, the idea of voting in a church is slightly strange. I remember when I went to teach at Cambridge University as quite a green young person, I was astonished to see that each college had a chapel that was very active. You know, the idea of universities full of chapels and priests.
[00:51:47] That's, to a French person, counterintuitive. So that is perhaps one of the great, great lines of difference. Anything else? I mean, how do you find British people's attitude to food, for example? That's a massive cliche, but actually, is there, do you think, still a difference? I think my experience is very skewed because I've lived in London most of these years I've spent in the UK.
[00:52:14] And I would probably have a very different answer if I'd lived anywhere else. So I don't actually find such a big difference. And I'm very lucky to be living with somebody who loves cooking and is very good at cooking and isn't French. And is not French. He's British. He's British. He's a British person who cooks really well. Yes. That's absolutely marvellous. So you've completely won at this game. This is brilliant. Fantastic. Charlotte, amazing story. Absolutely fascinating.
[00:52:44] Aspects of, I suppose, all the individuals it takes to drive something like this institution, this Institut Francais. That it starts with someone who cares about women's education and has perhaps her own experience of Britain and wants to promote friendly relations between the two nations.
[00:53:07] And then other events take over, wars, successive wars that again drive things because you have to look after refugees. You have to then house the resistance exiled from France. It's terrifically exciting. And it's wonderful to be here in this house that is still standing and still such a dynamic centre for that kind of soft power. You mentioned soft power.
[00:53:31] How important is it, that cultural interaction in terms of diplomacy? Does it matter? France is really good at doing soft powers in a lot of different ways. Working with school teachers, people who teach French across the UK and across the world. Working with local alliances françaises. That's another important place where one can learn French or hear about France.
[00:53:57] But it's really been important for France to have a place to call this French Institute because it gives that reputation and that exposure to France. So many French presidents, when they come to London, come to the French Institute, come to the Lycée, most of them have actually. It gives this exposure to the country. And it also makes us think that soft power is actually not abstract.
[00:54:26] It's embodied by the people that you've mentioned. And it's important to have a building for people to gather around and to meet. Yeah, a real home from home. On that note, thank you very much, Charlotte, for joining us on Garlick & Pearls. It's been a real pleasure to have you. Thank you very much, Marielle, for having me. Au revoir. Au revoir. It's just got me thinking, Suzanne, you've been to the French Institute in London, partly because you have friends who dabble in international culture. And you're interested, of course.
[00:54:55] You're a very outward-looking person. But have you been to the British Council in Paris ever? No, and I was thinking about that. I mean, of course, I wouldn't necessarily because... Well, you don't live in Paris. Well, also, if I'm in Paris, I'm there to see French things, not British things, because I'm British. But I suppose that's not what the British Council is for. But the British Council obviously has a very different origin story.
[00:55:24] It's more foreign policy political, in a way, than cultural. So it was set up originally in 1934 by the Foreign Office as the British Committee for Relations with Other Countries. So already, it's not about culture, it's about relations. Although it was then to support education abroad, promote culture, and fight the rise of extreme ideologies of communism and fascism.
[00:55:50] So again, it's a really complicated definition of what soft power is. Because what they're saying, I always think soft power is a very difficult thing to define, because what they're saying is we'll sneakily use culture in order to undermine other forms of government, which is maybe the same as... Well, maybe not undermine, but neutralise or tame. Yes, or sort of promote our way opposed to... Defang. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:56:15] But interestingly, I think, because it is something we might want to pause and reflect on, is that the British Council's first offices were not in Paris at all. But they were in Bucharest, Cairo, Lisbon, and Warsaw. So the one in Portugal was the earliest. Right.
[00:56:37] And they didn't open one in Paris until August 1944 with the liberation, which ties in, of course, to the Free French. It ties into the history of de Gaulle. So the thing I took from all this is, isn't it amazing that it's this mix of, I suppose, individuals with a vision. So, you know, you have de Gaulle with his idea of France, a certain idea of France,
[00:57:04] and he finds himself thrown in with the people at the Institute. But you also have the lesser known people who had a vision of what such an institution should be and what it's for. And so there's Marie Dorliac on the British side to set up a French Institute to tell people about Frenchness. And then on the French side, there was a British woman, an English woman, a little bit earlier than Marie Dorliac.
[00:57:31] There was a British woman called Edith Williams, who in 1894, so you see, you win that one again. And not that it's a competition, but it's always a little bit of a competition who got there first. It's always pleasing to be told I've won a competition I didn't even know I'd entered. She established it, something called the Institute of Paris, which later became a sort of outpost of the University of London.
[00:57:55] With the support of the then ambassador, the British ambassador, I won't go into detail about this because it's a whole other story. But the thinking was very similar. It was about language classes, educating people in the other language. And over time, this Institute in Paris, it dispensed French classes for British people, English classes for French people.
[00:58:18] And then it gained momentum in the way that the French Institute gained momentum in London because of the anxious realization after the Great War that it had been a bit of a problem that the British army and the French army spoke a different language. Crucially, didn't speak each other's language. So I suppose you're preparing for war by preparing for peace, by preparing for war. You know, it's a sort of layered thing, isn't it?
[00:58:43] I'd also reflect that over 100 years later, it's probably still very much the case in certain areas of the British and the French army that they still wouldn't be able to speak each other's language. There's still a lot of work to be done. So with that in mind, and with our grammar books under our arms and our dictionaries in our pockets, I'm going to say, let's leave it there. Do pay a visit to the Institut Francais if you're in London or if you live in London, you've never been there.
[00:59:11] It's an absolutely fascinating place and there's a lot to see there. And if you've enjoyed this episode, listeners, then please let us know. Leave us a review. Recommend us to your friends. I can't stress how important that is because the more people we reach, the happier a place the world will be. Suzanne, I look forward. We're here to promote Entente Cordia, aren't we? I think we should agree that Muriel might have slightly oversold that. But nonetheless.
[00:59:41] Nonetheless. Spread the word. Spread the word. And join us next time when it will be Suzanne's turn with something completely different. See you next time, Suzanne. Au revoir, Muriel.