Jonathan Meades :: On France ep2 (1/5)

A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries.

France granted independence to its colonies in the 1960s. That, anyway, is the official line. In fact, through such agencies as Francophonie which notionally promotes the French language and the secretive Francafrique which wields influence throughout much of Africa, the French state is in reality still a colonial power.

Jonathan inspects the Parisian palaces of tyrannical dynasties, the sites of political murders and the village where the Ayatollah Khomeini lived in exile.

Category:

Entertainment

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• Jonathan
• Meades

[benjiscott82]

meades on my pub quiz team, my iphone just isnt good enough

[Everywhere2]

Meades wrote about his experience of France in the Jan. 18, 2012, RadioTimes. YT won't post links, so if curious, give it a google. The pic alone's worth it. The opening: "France is unknown to the majority of my compatriots. It was at least partially unknown to me when I moved here five years ago – even though I had visited it regularly since childhood, even though I had lived here as a student, even though I had travelled throughout it with perennial curiosity and anorakish energy. "

[Everywhere2]

Tom Sutcliffe, writing in the Independent, Jan. 19, 2012: "Meades is one of the few really distinctive stylists we have left on television. His prose is aggressively undemotic (where another presenter would say 'pig farming,' he says 'porcine husbandry') and his manner is mischievously indifferent to the terror of not-being-likeable that seems to pervade so much presentation these days." ...And... "Some won't be exhilarated, I suppose. "They'll think it's elitist...."

[videowifie]

thank gawd, the production ethics in this one are back on form.

the last effort was soiled somewhat by the lazy drab computer graphics and made little of Meads's's gift for simply behaving quite oddly..a look in the credits I think

[heratus007]

thank you for uploading this

[Stereolabdream]

We mourned the loss of Christopher Hitchens as a major "political" voice of our times.

Let us celebrate,while admitting his faults (purely human), having Jonathan Meades as our cultural and architectural voice. No, more than this- his confidence in his opinions, and people's willingness to accept them give him the status of quasi "guru"...whatever that means...