Reading a book this afternoon I find that there used to be something called the "Anti-Gallican League".
Dedicated to such absurd ideas as keeping French products, French dancing masters, French garlic and French "frickasees" (as well as, one assumes, French diseases) out of a proper plain beef eating nation such as that personified by John Bull.
As a result of reading the book I of course came home and cooked roast beef…although I might have been Frenchified (or, to be honest, been influenced by wanting to live a little longer) by tipping away some of the lard…not all I hasten to add, retaining enough for a proper gravy….and using some garlic to flavour said beef.
However. This "Anti- Gallican League". Does it still exist? Might I become a member? Or did it die soon after birth, back in the 17 (mumble mumble decade of choice) s?
Anyone know?
I don’t know. I hope so. But can I just add my plug for the obvious solution to Britain’s economic problems:
War with France.
Think about. Every war we have fought against Germany has ended badly for us. Every war we have fought with Germany against France has ended up with Britain becoming richer and adding a few more colonies.
So the lesson of history here is undeniable. And frankly I think giving up Martinique for Canada was a piss poor bargain that we ought to rectify.
There is a pub in Charlton called the The Antigallican. Had no idea that was the meaning of the name…
http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/38/384/
Rupert
PS It’s right next to Charlton Athletic’s, so wearing Millwall colours while visiting might be inappropriate 🙂
The French gave us a nasty drubbing at Yorktown.
I have a record by the Yorkshire folk band Swan Arcade called ‘the Anti-Gallican Privateer’
http://www.folkinfo.org/songs/displaysong.php?songid=482
It sailed in 1779 from South Shields against the French, but didn’t make any money.
There was an earlier anti-Gallican which sailed from Deptford in 1756 and is likely to be the one which the Charlton pub’s named after.
http://openlibrary.org/b/OL19213868M
I ain’t know what y’all talkin bout.
Who it is ain’t ‘anti-Gallican’? You ever has a gallican stone in yo’ gallican bladder? It ain’t nothin to poke a stick at.
Maybe Thackeray was a member –
“I say to you that you are better than a Frenchman. I would lay even money that you who are reading this are more than five feet seven in height, and weigh eleven stone; while a Frenchman is five feet four and does not weigh nine. The Frenchman has after his soup a dish of vegetables, where you have one of meat. You are a different and superior animal — a French-beating animal (the history of hundreds of years has shown you to be so)”
(From Orwell’s essay on Charles Dickens).
Tim adds: That was one of the quotes in the book I was reading….
It wouldn’t be the same perhaps as the “Invade and Conquer France Society”, would it?
Some mountebanks of my more youthful acquaintance, some 20-odd or more years ago, called Tim Laughton (yes the MP) and Peter Caddick-Adams had set it up. Perhaps it still exists?
War with France also landed us with income tax (a temporary measure, apparently), so it’s not all good.