Sir: I yield to no one in my unconditional admiration
for Mr Timothy Garton Ash, on whose every word printed on both sides of the Atlantic I regularly hang. Hang that is until pulled up sharply by unexpected Homeric hiccups in his magisterial repor- tage. He writes (The trouble with Tri- dent', 12 April) ` "a toutes azimutes" as de Gaulle put it in a famous phrase'. No he never did. `How were my genders? Pretty bloody, I suppose?' Churchill once in- quired of me, after having had to translate extempore on his feet into French a speech he had written and expected to deliver in English. The General never had such a problem, nor need Mr Garton Ash have had, if only he had checked on the phrase or sought and found in a dictionary azimut, masculine noun, giving 'a sous azimuts'.
As for the French naval negotiator who allegedly asked, in the manner of Beach- comber's Mr Justice Cocklecarrot, 'What are cornflakes?', if he ever existed at all, which I doubt, he must have been Admiral Phillipe de Gaulle, carrying on with filial piety Papa's resistance to Anglais and Franglais. For, as I have just confirmed by making telephonic spot-checks from Chan- nel to Atlantic to Mediterranean, with further investigation into the interior, there have been for decades now available in every self-respecting French foodstore (as in my local Swiss Co-op) not only Cornflakes (two sorts) but Rice Krispies, Frosties, Smacks, Shreddies, Corn Pops and even Special K. There is even a rumour that the Academie Frangaise are working on a French definition of Rice Krispies, so far undecided.
Alastair Forbes
1837 Chateau d'Oex, Switzerland
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