Our previous Prime Minister (Mr Blair) speaks fluent French. The French were famously gob-smacked the first time he went there and delivered his speech to them in their language.

We're not quite as bad as the Americans, but the "speak English or die" attitude of some of my countrymen abroad mortifies me. I am fluent in French and get by in Italian and Spanish. None of which were difficult to acquire, and from which I derive a great deal of pleasure, both while traveling and at home via foreign magazines, websites and TV channels.

Those who won't even make the effort are, in my experience, either intellectually lazy or xenophobic philistines.