QotD: Franco-British Relations

Despite our membership in the European Union, despite the Channel Tunnel's visual abolition of water and cliff, some of my compatriots still exhibit a Bouvardian alarm at having the French as neighbours, let alone closer ones. Francopobia remains our first form of Europhobia, though not of xenophobia (ethnic minorities have edged out the French in that regard). The French are genuinely puzzled by the bile of our tabloid press, shocked that a country known for phlegm and decorous manners can also deal in such jeering contempt. It's not really you, I try to explain; it's just that you are more than yourselves, you have become the symbol of all that is foreign; everything, not just Frenchness, begins at Calais. Whereas you may look across your different frontiers and be offered a choice of four great civilizations, we in our offshore islands are surrounded by you on one side and fish on the other three. No wonder we feel about you more strongly, more obsessively — whether as Francophile or Francophobe — than you feel about us.

Julian Barnes, Something to Declare: Essays on France, 2002.