I bought The Secret Life of France, hoping that I will learn more about France, after a great review in the Independent.

In the end, I think I actually learnt more about myself, in England, than about France.

I have lived here for almost 10 years, and I came here when I was 19, from Albania, to join my English boyfriend to whom I am now married.

It was interesting to realise that I am immersed in this English way of living, working and thinking and how different I would be now, had I lived elsewhere.

There were many things that I have now embraced, that I hated in the beginning. One of these (same as your daughter) not being noticed in the tube or anywhere, quite different from my experience back home, or in Italy. I realise now, that it’s a small price to pay for feeling free to be yourself, in the most crowdest and uncomfortable places such as the tube in rush hour.

Anyway, I’m glad I read the books section on the Independent and got to read your book. A great insight into the way we live and how the past influences us today and the generations to come.

In what one hopes will be your next book in France, could you perhaps delve deeper into this: the well-developed ability of the French to endure, without complaint, levels of boredom, which would drive your average Brit to distraction? Examples: TV, road-works, school, discussions, meals, strikes, family reunions, ‘la famille, tout court’…. What a contrast with the pathetic eagerness to be first up into the bus or train, though the saving in time is tiny.
‘Ah, but it is our Latin temperament!’ – No way, José!

Few North Europeans are so serious-minded as the French. But then Franks…. French. Ethnically speaking… Do I have to spell it out? The French are Germans with ‘charme’. There, that should do it! How to upset everyone…

I read the extract from your book and failed to notice much heavy-duty stitching. As for ‘the guiltless nature of the incident for all the people involved’…, well I have difficulty in picturing this. You could put it down to my incurable provincialism. Old age? I can’t help but see adultery as a dreadfully oafish activity, particularly so when the adultery is acted out before friends. Elsewhere, you dwell on the uncomplicated way the French go about their pleasure-seeking, and go so far as to suggest that France’s ‘poor war effort’ could be ascribed to a kind of pleasure-dependency. I wonder.

A few days ago, travelling by train to London, I noticed a young French couple nearby. The male looked sleepily Byronic and post-tumescent, one foot on the seat opposite, the other perched on top of the waste-bin. The she was tastefully draped around him, and would stroke his cheek with finger-tips, every few seconds, while he moodily surveyed the passing landscape. What I’m getting at is this: the pleasure-principle this most emphatically was not! Whatever pleasure there was, was being savoured so artistically, so tastefully, so self-consciously…. that it was more a calling, vocational than fun. Just like Jean-Paul Sartre’s café waiter. This was as un-spontaneous as you can get. But just try telling the French they’re not spontaneous!

I wouldn’t bother about the lack of respect shown by the ‘Sunday Times’. I believe this particular wedge reaches 1.4 million breakfast tables, and that’s not to be sniffed at. Besides, think of the timing, just before the reviews come along, and the book-buying public buys her(?) holiday reading. The other paper sounds dead cheeky, though. The ‘house style’, fiddlesticks!

Yes the British press is a censorious, prurient, old whore. But unlike your own – ‘and don’t sneak away, ‘l’Huma’ or ‘Libé’, come back, this concerns you too!’ – she’s a freelance, not a kept ‘floosie’. Unless, that is, you can indicate an un-supported, un-subsidized, un-cowed French title… I expect to win few ‘brownie points’ for confessing this, but I find ‘Le Figaro’ more reader-friendly, less opaque than most. Whatever the politics.