エピソード

  • Absinthe: Was the iconic drink of the Belle Epoque enchanting or poisonous?
    2025/02/21
    Over a glass of the legendary green aperitif, Muriel presents Suzanne with the history and myths of absinthe – its rise from local Alpine speciality to the metropolitan tipple of artists and boulevardiers, followed by its dramatic downfall, against a background of social anxiety about degeneracy and violence.

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    1 時間
  • Valentine’s Day: how French amour courtois turned into Victorian enterprise
    2025/02/14
    On this special day for swains and sweethearts Suzanne leads Muriel down surprising heritage pathways: tracking the relic of St Valentine’s head, wondering why French-style love poetry flourished after Agincourt, and revealing who adorned Victorian Valentine’s cards with dead birds.

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    55 分
  • Johnny Hallyday: The French Elvis?
    2025/02/07
    Where Muriel introduces Suzanne to a colossal French star who was the ambassador of American rock in France and became both a national monument and the incarnation of French masculinity.

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    1 時間
  • The Orsini Bomb: Made in Britain and designed to kill the French Emperor!
    2025/01/31
    Suzanne untangles an astonishing plot to do away with Napoleon III in 1858 Paris. Unfolding in the coffee houses of London and the industrial workshops of Birmingham, it is a riveting tale of Italian nationalists backed by British radicals, all dreaming of the Revolution!

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    1 時間 1 分
  • The Black Polo Neck: French national dress, political uniform, or philosophical flag?
    2025/01/24
    In which Muriel unpacks for Suzanne the various hidden meanings taken on in France by the black polo neck. From Hollywood to the Left Bank, the humble polo neck acts as rallying sign for the counterculture as well as the Establishment, and no Existentialist would be seen without it!

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    58 分
  • Wheelie Bins: Blessing or curse?
    2025/01/17
    Alegedly invented by accident in Slough, the army of wheelie bins now lining our streets is the latest iteration of British society’s attempts to manage waste. Suzanne ploughs heroically through centuries of ashpits, dustbins and cesspools, recounting many convulsions of public-spiritedness as she tries to get Muriel to think pragmatically about rubbish.

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    55 分
  • The Concierge: The pantomime villain that the French love to hate?
    2025/01/10
    In which Muriel tells Suzanne the story of French concierges – the guardians of French buildings – involving systematic and distinctive urban planning begun in the 1830s, the proliferation of concierge imagery and mythology throughout literature, satirical cartons and vaudeville, and the real-life hardships faced by concierges in the past and in contemporary France.

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    1 時間 6 分
  • Marmalade: Who invented it and how did it become a shortcut for Britishness?
    2025/01/03
    James Bond spread it on his breakfast toast; Paddington and Queen Elizabeth II kept marmalade sandwiches ‘for emergencies’; Scott of the Antarctic took some to the South Pole. Suzanne peels away layers of the history of marmalade as it evolved from dark quince paste to translucent bitter orange jelly and grew into a ubiquitous British export throughout the world, with Dundee as its capital city. And Muriel reveals her own surprising marmalade journey of enlightenment.

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    1 時間 3 分