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  • Bell Ringing

    Bell Ringing
    2026/06/05
    Starting with the glorious 1934 novel The Nine Tailors by queen of crime Dorothy L. Sayers, set in the mystical, liminal landscape of the Fens and in the haunting world of ancient bell ringing, Suzanne explores the English art of campanology. Ringing in rounds requires intense mental and physical discipline – in the novel, the intrepid Lord Peter Wimsey rings bells for nine hours solid – and this communal activity already bound villages together in Tudor times. How did England evolve a form of music – the voice of a village – that is written as a sequence of numbers? Suzanne patiently walks Muriel through the mechanics of belfries and the mind-boggling mathematics of change ringing, strike intervals and vertiginous extents.

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    52 分
  • What We Get Wrong About France, With Debora Robertson, Expat Extraordinaire

    What We Get Wrong About France, With Debora Robertson, Expat Extraordinaire
    2026/05/29
    Suzanne and Muriel welcome as a special guest the food writer and journalist Debora Robertson. a perceptive observer of French village life in the South-West – and the French psyche – in her Substack, Lickedspoon. She describes what it's like to be an exotic Brit in the French countryside and shares on-the-ground anecdotes about French behaviour. We find out which is more important, croissants or yoghurts? Is the baguette still sacred? Is the French administration really the embodiment of evil? Is it possible for the French to enjoy British food? What are the byzantine rules of kissing people hello? Are bidets a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Are the French rude? What is normal for France and what do you have to do to fit in? And much more!

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    49 分
  • Zebra Crossings: Freedom, Safety and British Science in Black and White!

    Zebra Crossings: Freedom, Safety and British Science in Black and White!
    2026/05/22
    How, wonders Suzanne, did Britain come to gift the Big Z to the entire world? And how did Britain become a place where pedestrians can expect, in most cases, to find a crossing in the right place? The presence of zebra crossings is the fruit of a long evolution involving bitter parliamentary debates and the tension between limiting speed and protecting an Englishman's freedom of the highway. We meet the transformative figures of Leslie Hore-Belisha, inventor of the driving test and the flashing Belisha beacon, and Dr George Charlesworth, – aka 'Dr Zebra' – whose studies in contrast perception led to Britain leading the way in road safety worldwide: 'Listener, if you seek his monument, look around you.'

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    54 分
  • The 100th Episode: Our Peak-Britain and Peak-France Chart-Toppers!

    The 100th Episode: Our Peak-Britain and Peak-France Chart-Toppers!
    2026/05/15
    Muriel and Suzanne raise a shaken, not stirred pickled-onion-and-Orangina cocktail to toast a vintage episode of the podcast. Now 100 hours into exploring Britishness and Frenchness, they each select their 5 favourite episodes presented by the other and reflect on what they have discovered along the way. An overflowing cornucopia of garlic, pearls, revelations, surprises and cultural aperçus, this landmark episode throws some light on the results of G&P's inquiries and highlights many gems in the podcast's catalogue. Did your favourite make the cut?

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    57 分
  • May 68: How and Why France Dreamed Up Another Revolution

    May 68: How and Why France Dreamed Up Another Revolution
    2026/05/08

    Muriel wonders why the May 68 uprisings happened so expansively and explosively in the France of De Gaulle and not in Howard Wilson's Britain. She takes Suzanne back to a time of flying cobblestones and bourgeois Maoist students on the barricades. What triggered the events, what fanned the fire? How much of a revolution was May 68, really? What political and social fracture has it left in French society? And what is its legacy in terms of imagery and myth? Glorious utopia of social break-down?



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    53 分
  • The Blue Willow Pattern: A Tale of Romance, Bone and Clay

    The Blue Willow Pattern: A Tale of Romance, Bone and Clay
    2026/05/01
    Suzanne takes Muriel on a journey to a faraway land, travelling into the hidden depths of a dinner plate. Its famous pattern – trees, a pagoda, a bridge, a boat, a fence – tells a version of Romeo and Juliet's story set in Imperial China. The plate was first made in England in the 18th century, but the story and its memorable characters – an eminent mandarin, his beautiful daughter, an ardent young man, a resourceful maid – were retrofitted to the plate as part of a story of cross-cultural admiration, imitation and adaptation that unfolded in Staffordshire in the 1780s. But how did Josiah Spode rewrite the pottery rule book? And how has the allure of Blue Willow lasted to this day?

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    55 分
  • The Laughing Cow: The Quintessential French Cheese

    The Laughing Cow: The Quintessential French Cheese
    2026/04/24
    In France, a country with a multiplicity of cheeses, only one achieves national unity: the humble Vache qui rit – or Laughing Cow. But what are the origins of this product? Invented in the wake of the Great War as a trailblazing 'fromage moderne', it shares a terroir with the more prestigious Comté, which is also one of its ingredients. Paradoxically, Muriel suggests, this processed melted cheese – part Proustian madeleine and part gateway to gastronomy – is an expression of the French passion for le fromage. And Suzanne also receives something she didn't know she needed: a moo box!

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    1 時間 2 分
  • The Monarch of the Glen: The Surprisingly Passionate Tale of Landseer's Emblematic Masterpiece

    The Monarch of the Glen: The Surprisingly Passionate Tale of Landseer's Emblematic Masterpiece
    2026/04/17
    An imposing stag stands in a dramatic landscape, in a famous painting hanging in pride of place in the National Scottish Gallery. But what are we really looking at, asks Suzanne. An accomplished oil painting by a Victorian master? A great icon for Scotland? Is is the painting a case of cultural appropriation and the encapsulation of 'Balmorality'? Does it matter if Landseer lost his head to the romance of Scotland? And who was he, and why did he paint the famous stag? It's a rollicking tale of tormented artistic temperament and the peregrinations of a painting, featuring the early days of marketing and mass reproduction, a very French case of cherchez la femme, a delicious recipe for potatoes and the foreshadowing of action painting – with tea.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    45 分