Mkaren - thanks so much for that background.
You might like to watch Poldark (or even read the books by Winston Graham, on which it was based - I have not read them by my mother has; she loved them. They were never intended to be great works of literature, but they have fast-paced plots, lots of family intrigue [at the beginning, Ross Poldark, the hero, has just returned from the wars with France to find his family estate in ruins and his childhood sweetheart married to his cousin. Also on the scene are the Poldarks' arch-rivals, the Warleggan family, who are 'new money' and therefore despised. The TV series also benefits from amazing scenery] - we love it, but it is a bit of a 'Sunday night BBC drama' - ie quite ridiculous in parts. The son of the author was, however, involved in the adaptation (it was done once before, many years ago, with Angharad Rees playing the heroine Demelza, and those of us who saw it then thought a new version could never be as good, but in fact it is wonderful and has been nominated for several awards) and he was very pleased with the outcome..
I imagine that change came more slowly to Cornwall because it was so remote; even when I was a child it was a very poor area, and although we now tend to think of it as the county of second homes and holidays, the interior is still quite poor and lacking jobs. So many very wealthy people have bought properties down there - houses that they rarely use - that the locals have been totally priced out of the market. Most jobs are seasonal with very little left in the winter. But to return to Poldark - the main industry then was tin mining, and there were many mine accidents, and fortunes lost as mines (and banks) failed or the price of tin was artificially manipulated. The working people suffered from malnutrition, there were hardly any doctors prepared to care for them, and if a man died in the mine, his family was left destitute.
As for France - although English people are always on holiday in France and many have second homes there, I think there is still a lot of distrust. When I was a child my mother - whom I would not describe as racist - thought of it as the land of smelly food (garlic, cheese - you name it!) and rabies. She was seriously unhappy about the building of the channel tunnel because she feared that a rabid fox could enter the tunnel and bring rabies to England. (I have to say that since then she has been through the tunnel several times.) There is also still a lot of snobbery enshrined in the English language that stems from the times of Napoleon - it is still not 'done' to say 'serviette' for 'napkin', 'toilet' for 'lavatory', or 'lounge' for 'sitting room'. I used to know someone who was obsessed with this sort of stuff and I must say I enjoyed using the 'wrong' words just to annoy her.
My husband works in Paris, and both he and I have bought lapel badges that show the French and Scottish flags intertwined, as although we were both born in England, we have lived in Scotland for many, many years and we know that the French like Scotland far more than they like England - there has always been an alliance between the two countries, and Scottish politics also have far more socialist tendencies than England, which is (or has been until recently) also true of France. You get a much better reception in France if you are Scottish!
I'll stop wittering now!
Rosemary
