You have to go back a long time - 600 years - to the other side of the world, to find the time when England owned a lot of France, especially the wine growing areas around Bordeaux.  Those were the days when men were men, and kings were kings who led their armies to victory on the battlefield. Sadly, we lost it all, thanks to the incompetence of our monarchs, the disloyalty of the Scots who would stab us in the back given the least excuse, and a little bit of divine intervention in the form of Joan of Arc.

When in the seventeenth century England began to build its great new Empire, for some reason I don’t understand we left France alone and concentrated on America, India, Australia etc. A missed opportunity. But strong English links with that part of France continued. For centuries it was the Brits who bought all the fine wine from the Bordeaux area, when the French were drinking the left-overs – for them quantity not quality was important. The French say we Brits are wine snobs. We Brits say France only colonised Algeria to get even cheaper lousy wine. To this day you will find that Brits drink Bordeaux wine in preference to the wine of the rest of Europe.

So when fifty years ago the British started to buy homes abroad, it’s no surprise that the area inland around Bordeaux became an expat centre. The Dordogne is now so full of Brits that it’s called “Dordogneshire” and there’s an English-owned airport just for us to travel backwards and forwards. It’s hard to find a French person in some of the villages there. Your kids can go to an English language school, and, more important, learn the English version of history, which is, of course, quite different from the ridiculous French and even Scottish versions. Our version has long descriptions of the battles we won but passes quickly over the part where we lost.

It may be hard for you foreigners to understand, but one day we will get our part of France back!

Isn’t it an odd world that we live in?