I was in France at the weekend. Before anyone starts to go green with envy, I was not in the stadium at Paris, hugger-mugger with the crowds, feeling the pulsating beat of national pride.
I didn't walk into the, apparently, electrifying atmosphere that greeted arrivals at the Gare du Nord, with a white double-decker bus parked outside, all the supporters' signatures scrawled on it. No, I was sin of sins checking my mobile-phone text messages for scores, underneath the table of a Michelin-starred restaurant in Champagne. Eventually, a small group of us British journalists, knock-kneed with excitement, manners having lost out to the urgent desire to shout 'Go Jonny!', crept out between the main course and pudding to cram into a hotel bedroom to watch the second, jubilant half.
The woman from the French tourist board sat, lips tight and thin throughout. And she was English! I am not a sports fan. I don't play sports. I don't, to be frank, know my offside from my yellow card. But national games are a thing to be adored and joined in with. The miracle that is the England rugby team must be cheered on. Enjoy.
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‘Pope Paul V remains a popular effigy today, and gets blown up in Lewes most years’: A five minute guide to England’s wackiest Bonfire Night celebrationsThe market town of Lewes in East Sussex has not one, not two, but seven bonfire societies and its celebrations have been labelled the ‘only proper Guy Fawkes night left’.
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A country house that was the set for one of the best-loved sitcoms of the 1980s is for sale, with 40,000sq ft of space, 39 bedrooms and almost endless potentialLynford Hall, a vast neo-Jacobean house that's been everything from a country hotel to an agricultural college, has come to the market. Toby Keel tells its story.
