Muriel Zagha
@murielzagha
Writer & broadcaster; film specialist – BBC, TLS, ENGELSBERG IDEAS, APOLLO, SPECTATOR and others; Critics’ Circle; French Londoner Garlic&Pearls podcast Instagram @murielzaghawriter
This week on the Garlic&Pearls podcast, a ’Summer Postcard’ from me and @suzanneraine.bsky.social - how this drink became so central to French apéritif culture! Link in reply 👇
This is, I think, my one and only pic taken with a celebrity, and I TREASURE it. #johnwaters
This week on the Garlic & Pearls podcast, I tell @suzanneraine.bsky.social the story of THE STRIPY BRETON TOP, or how a satanic pattern became the epitome of French chic! Zebras get a mention too. Join us on Garlic&Pearls!
Going to a pub quiz this week? What's your team name? Agatha Quizteam? Quiz Hurley? The Quizzard of Oz? If not, (and why ever not?) then the next best thing (in preparation for your next quiz) is to find out all about PUB QUIZZES on the Garlic&Pearls podcast! Tune in with me and Suzanne Raine!
This week on the Garlic&Pearls podcast: Pub Quizzes! Biros at the ready as @suzanneraine.bsky.social takes me on a tour of a very British obsession. Are the best pub quizzes where the British sense of terroir is located? Warning: this episode contains an avalanche of punning. ⬇️
Re-upping an article I wrote for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social in the wake of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, about divergent French ideas of what the ‘roman national’, or national narrative, should be. engelsbergideas.com/notebook/wha...
For The Telegraph I wrote about the mega-banquets of Le Canon Français 🇫🇷 and the ways in which cheese and charcuterie have become politicised. France is sadly riven, it seems, but I hope for better things! Link in reply.
With all this talk of Anglo-Gaullism, do refresh yourself at the 🇫🇷 source. On Garlic & Pearls we revisit, with our guest @charlottefaucher.bsky.social, the fascinating pivotal times when @frenchinstituteuk.bsky.social rallied around De Gaulle and the Free French in London in 1940. Link in reply.
For The Telegraph I wrote a comment piece suggesting that French food isn't, in fact, far-Right! www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06...
We are so grateful to the fantastic team at @frenchinstituteuk.bsky.social who generously flung their doors open to us and encouraged our scholarly sleuthing. Vive l'Entente Cordiale!
On Garlic & Pearls , I explore the INSTITUT FRANÇAIS in the company of our wonderful guest and guide the historian @charlottefaucher.bsky.social. Find out all about this hub of French soft power and diplomacy! Charismatic founder Marie d'Orliac and De Gaulle and the Free French guest star!
In this week's episode of Garlic & Pearls, I tell @suzanneraine.bsky.social the dramatic story of the Great 1910 Paris Flood: the City of Light pitted against Nature and the roiling raging Seine! Tune in!
In Paris today revisiting (after a few decades) French steakhouse Hippopotamus. A lot of office workers instead. A carnivores’ rendez-vous (I ordered a tartare). I’m afraid I’m eavesdropping avidly left and right…
What do the British get wrong about France? This week on the fantastique Garlic&Pearls podcast, hear us in conversation with expat extraordinaire Debora Robertson, who chronicles her French life on the Licked Spoon Substack. The truth about croissants, stylish women, rudeness, bidets and much more!
Thrilled to have reviewed for wondrous World of Interiors Jared Goss’s Birth of Art Deco, about Ruhlmann’s staggering Collector’s House, designed in 1925 as a show pavilion at the Paris Art Deco Exposition. Ruhlmann wrote: ‘Isn’t seeing grand and being grand, for us, a dominant preoccupation?’
Tomorrow on Garlic&Pearls, with me and the ineffable @suzanneraine.bsky.social
Hooray! A wonderful new review has appeared on our website garlicandpearls.com! Thank you and merci to Oliver, a man of taste who enjoys our 🇬🇧🇫🇷 podcast and was kind enough to let us know. Suzanne and I are delighted and much encouraged!
Delighted to have appeared this morning alongside @harrywallop.co.uk on @TimesRadio Breakfast with cracking hosts Rosie Wright and Nick Wallis. My take away from our discussion: the greener choice of furniture is - bear with me; this is radical - some that is ALREADY MADE and has lasted centuries.
Looking forward to the screening at the Institut français du Royaume-Uni of ´Bardot’ by Alain Berliner - a terrific documentary film about Brigitte Bardot - this coming Wednesday 6 May at 6pm. I will be moderating a Q&A afterwards with the director, and eminent critic Ginette Vincendeau. Join us!
New and fascinating episode of the Garlic&Pearls podcast today: THE BLUE WILLOW PATTERN! @suzanneraine.bsky.social steps up to the plate with a story of romance, bone and clay.
Tonight. Thank you so much to the Institut Francais for having me! #brigittebardot
Looking forward to introducing the screening of Une Parisienne, Michel Boisrond's 1957 film starring Brigitte Bardot on very good form, at 6.15 tonight at the glorious @frenchinstituteuk.bsky.social!
Interested to hear about people’s experience of this delicious and very French cheese as it is the topic of this week’s episode of the Garlic&Pearls podcast! 🇫🇷
Richly textured day yesterday: to St George’s Hanover Square to view Stabbing the Sin A White Lily is Blooming, Romanian artist Teodora Axente’s Orthodox-surreal painting of St George. Then to @bfi to see John Waters’ eye-watering Multiple Maniacs, with Divine in full Elizabeth Taylor-Godzilla mode.