THE British and the French form “un couple infernal.” The two nations coexist in close geographical proximity and are bound together by a long history of affection and aversion.
The aversion part is more widely noticed than the mutual respect. A 1980s TV sketch, featuring the comic Rowan Atkinson, showed him wearing a black beret and striped Maillot top and declaring, “We haven’t forgotten Agincourt or the Eurovision Song Contest.”
The same jokes would land today because a tetchy sense of mutual misunderstanding is vital to the Anglo-French relationship.