Meanwhile, France.

If I were faced with doing an Elba, and had to be exiled from the country where I choose and love to live, there is no doubt in my mind that the best alternative would be France. It is the quintessentially European country. It has an abundance of physical beauty and variety from the wild Atlantic coast to the balmy Mediterranean beaches with rich colours and bougainvillea hedgerows against whitewash walls.

It has the highest snow capped peaks in Europe, grand lakes, verdant rolling countryside, wide lazy rivers, vast solitary forests, and areas of craggy rocks with ancient villages perched on top.

It has soaring cathedral spires, old castles full of turrets, sprawling palaces.

It has sleepy villages whose timeless houses sit comfortably in the heat of the afternoon. A deserted lane leads round a corner from abundant fields and intoxicating growth of the summer season, past neatly trimmed grass edges into the village. The long shutters are firmly closed against the heat of the afternoon and the inhabitants are nowhere to be seen, apart from the odd dog that wanders aimlessly into the street from a dusty yard and flops down panting in the shade of the plain trees.

In France more than in any other European country there is an accommodation between the new and the traditional.

Rural France is timeless, undisturbed on the outside, but behind those closed shutters there are all the interior niceties of modern living. The French have never been ostentatious about their comfort and wealth, for to do so might invite the need to pay more taxes.

There are plenty of broken down old barns with a Mercedes inside.

And then there is Paris, surely the most consistently perfect of all cities. You only have to stand on the Arc de Triomphe to see the perfection of Napoleonic planning radiate out and filter away towards the river. There are none of the jarring shoe boxes of the 1960's London which agonise that skyline. There is instead a flow of grey slate roofs, shutters and metal balconies, in summer with little window boxes giving colour and life. It is integrated, complete and just right. Then at street level there is a culture of cafes and restaurants , of corner epiceries to ensure that the basic necessities of French life are available. Access to a morning baguette is more sacred than access to things like motorways, schools and supermarkets.

Yet at the same time France is the most modern of nations with its power grids, fast trains and industry. France has even evolved a modern fashion, integrating new materials to serve its needs, but not in a garish or intrusive way. The trains are plastic inside for the most part, as are the chains of comfortable hotels. But these new polymers have been used in a way that makes them stylish rather than utilitarian. Plastic has been moved from convenience to fashion.

And the French do have class.

Where other countries may have class distinction, they in fact have no class. What they have is groups based on different types of vulgarity. But in France there is an elegance which has to do with its great past and at the same time its ability to integrate it into its present. And as long as you are prepared to embrace this Frenchness, you are free to become part of it. Racism in France was never based on colour as it was for example in England. It was based simply on the degree of Frenchness that a person was willing to adopt. That is no doubt in my mind that that is why the French culture of the colonial days in places like Mauritius endured long after the British took charge, and even after a hundred or more years, they never managed to leave their mark, other than overturned laws and systems of government.

It is of course more difficult for Anglophone countries to arm themselves against Americanisation. France has tried and perhaps succeeded better than most countries with the exception maybe of Spain.

What I like about France is the ability to have conversations about these issues with a realism and a variety of views, and a passion which is able to explain easily the French revolution and the fact that we are already on to the fifth republic!

Yes, the world owes France more than we give credit.

John Rock (Sydney 2002)