Zoot alors!:

The decision by Buckingham Palace to stage a show of friendship towards the French in the chamber marking the end of the Entente Cordiale anniversary celebrations has caused some surprise in France.

"Celebrating the Entente Cordiale in this museum filled with Franco-English antagonism seems at first sight an unpardonable error of taste," Le Figaro said in a wry front page article yesterday, detailing plans for the official visit by President Jacques Chirac and his wife to England on November 18 and 19. "Questions must be asked."

"Jacques Chirac has no great nostalgia for the Emperor. But to be entertained by the monarchy in a room where pictures hang of the key individuals involved in the defeat of the Napoleonic army ... and where more or less every June 18 there is a toast to the defeat of France, risks arousing his bile," the newspaper said.

Long-serving diplomats will remember comparable embarrassment when René Coty, the French president from 1954 to 1958, stood to address a state banquet given by the Queen and found himself positioned between two large battle scenes, one of Waterloo and one of Trafalgar.