Hola, Salut, Aboutye…

This is Speak the Culture, self-appointed doyen of all things cultural. We’re trying to get to the bottom of national culture. Country by country, jabbing and poking, investigating the things and the people that you, no doubt an enlightened citizen, really should know about. Take the French: all those names lurking in your subconscious – Baudelaire, Pascal, Truffaut. Who were they, what did they do and why are they so important to the dear old French?

It all began with a book: Speak the Culture: France, which rapidly turned into a series of books and now leaks out onto the web, pushing the debate about culture, the arts and identity. Enjoy!

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Blog

“…What’s he going to do? I mean what? Really? He’s spent nearly all of his overdraft and his credit cards are all maxed-out or something and he’s going to sleep on it.

Yes, sleep on it.”

Read Johnny’s latest culture blog

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Win books

Take our one-minute culture survey for the chance to win three Speak the Culture books. Go on, you’ve got a minute to spare…

Take the culture survey

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Strange stuff

Did you know that Alfred Hitchcock was a chicken dealer’s son from Leytonstone? No? But you had your suspicions right.

Speak the Culture unearths some other strange facts about Britain’s cultural heroes.

Go to other strange stuff