The Napoleon Prize

by Neil Thomas
August 10th, 2010

After a few weeks of shopping in fantastic French greengrocers, cheese shops, independent book shop/newsagents, bread and cake shops in St Remy de Provence (a typical small town experience in France) I think that there should be a special prize for shopkeeping.

Keeping food buying such a pleasure is a fantastic achievement in the current economic climate and needs to be applauded. (And this ignores the thriving markets of France with thousands of stallholders operating in effect as ‘pop-up’ shopkeepers – maybe a special category award would be needed for them).

After all, the Italians have a Slow Food movement to combat the creeping damage done by the Fast Food movement and I think that brave and valiant shopkeeping (in the face of supermarket damage to the retail experience) should be recognised, encouraged and rewarded.

Napoleon Bonaparte said disparagingly that “L’Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers”. However, with a lovely dose of irony, my first ever ‘Napoleon Award’ now goes to… France, where shopkeeping is generally more thriving and more diverse and where shopkeepers are respected and loyally supported. The small shop remains at the heart of the French lifestyle, and the Italian lifestyle for that matter.

So, Britain has lost another title – we invented football and rugby etc. We were the first nation of shopkeepers, but we are now one of the also-rans.