Liberation 20/04/07A Scottish women embedded with the candidates.
On the eve of the election, here is a book where one of the last phrases rings true:
“Given what is at stake, the choice for French electors is 1) depressing, 2) desperately difficult, 3) really Cornelian. To arrive at this conclusion, Emma Vandore, a Scottish journalist with a caustic humour who lives in Paris proposes a personal walk through the microcosm of French media and politics. Very vivid and full of impressions of her discovery of our political habits (but also amorous or gastronomic), her story is the humorous account of an ordeal. One of a journalist stuck with the etiquette ‘Anglo-Saxon’ _ and thus considered an economic liberal _ by all her official interlocutors.. and even by her new French friends. Emma Vandore is one of the rare correspondents in Paris to directly cover all the political events she writes about. She follows Chirac on his trips abroad, chronicles the rise of Sarkozy and the Royal campaign, she tells in the form of a diary which begins in 2004 of her joys and disappointments living among these so ‘exotic’ French people. A Socialist grandee who she just met from Royal’s team puts a hand on her knee and proposes to be her mistress. When Chirac tells her of a youthful holiday in Scotland, the little Court of the Elysee can’t get enough of her. But when the no wins in the referendum,, those same people (both the yes and the no) become hysterical in her presence for different reasons. Sometimes playfully caricatured, she describes a nervous country, terrified by globalisation but where she is delighted to take advantage of the social benefits. The paradox of this book is that through her repeated and often beneficial criticism, Emma Vandore finishes by establishing without wanting to a defence of the Anglo-Saxon model. In short, her ordeal has only begun
