Excerpt:
Earlier this week, France learned that Claude Levi-Strauss, a leading anthropologist and a member of the elite Academie Francaise, had died aged 100.
Not being familiar with his work, I was intrigued to see what this revered intellectual had written about the characteristics of French society, hoping his discoveries might help me understand better the "je ne sais quoi" that makes the French so very... French.
Unfortunately, Monsieur Levi-Strauss chose to focus most of his major studies on Amazonian and American Indian communities rather than Gallic ones.
There is an apocryphal story that when he was introduced to President Sarkozy at his centenary birthday celebrations, he turned to a colleague with interest and asked: "What tribe is he from?"
The French leader, albeit with different research methods, is currently carrying out his own survey on national identity. Government officials are holding a series of public meetings to canvass opinion about the state of the nation's patriotic spirit.