Pollsters asked an open-ended question all across Europe: what five adjectives sum up the French. Europe is unanimous in its dislike of the French:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as “chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless”. However, the French may be more shocked by the views of other nations.

For the Germans, the French are “pretentious, offhand and frivolous”. The Dutch describe them as “agitated, talkative and shallow.” The Spanish see them as “cold, distant, vain and impolite” and the Portuguese as “preaching”. In Italy they comes across as “snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed” and the Greeks find them “not very with it, egocentric bons vivants”.

Interestingly, the Swedes consider them “disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty”.

Suddenly, I feel better about most of Europe.

I would have used different adjectives: spinless, amoral, greedy, pretentious and smelly. I include the last because I was on a city bus in Paris for about three blocks. Even though we weren’t at our destination we were forced off by the odor and decided to walk the rest of the way.