My love of the French language started at the age of eleven when I began learning it at secondary school in England. I was actually very lucky, as fifty percent of the pupils in my year took German whilst the other half took French, and I just happened to be in one of the classes that took French. I think my mother, who came from the north of England, appreciated the guttural sounds of German, but it has always seemed quite an ugly-sounding language to me, compared with the beautiful, romantic sound of French.

How different language learning was back then from today. Our teacher was a native French woman, Mademoiselle Vincent. I can still picture her standing at the front of the class full of girls, repeating the particular vowel sounds of French over and over again for us to imitate. What better grounding for good French pronunciation; but in today's classrooms, I doubt she would be able to make herself heard. I can remember that we use to have dictation, losing a full mark for a spelling mistake and half for a missing or incorrect accent. That really made me take care to learn to spell French correctly, remembering the silent letters and the agreements of feminine and plural forms. I can still recall how disappointed I would be if my French homework was graded anything less than an A-, as I always put my utmost into it.

By the age of sixteen I had decided that I wanted to study art, but French was still the obvious choice for me as another A-level subject. In English literature I had only achieved a mediocre grade C at O-level, but as I began to study French literature at advanced level, it brought out the best in me and I got that coveted grade A at the end of the two-year course. I still have vivid recollections of reading Alain Fournier's heart-rending novel 'Le Grand Meaulnes', as well as my introduction to nineteenth-century French poetry. How delighted I was to find a year or so ago on Ebay an anthology of French poetry from Villon to Verlaine, that included Arthur Rimbaud's 'Voyelles' and 'Le Bateau Ivre'. What a nostalgic journey I had leafing through the pages of that book.

Once I had become an art student, I didn't forget my love of French. Having moved to Manchester, I was lucky to have plenty of opportunity to see the latest French films of Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. One of my favourite performances was that of Stephane Audran in Chabrol's 'Le Boucher'. It wasn't until many years later, however, that I caught up with Jean-Luc

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