When the American ambassador’s wife attended a “breakfast” there in 1838, an event which actually started at three in the afternoon, she found the grand salon “filled with eager listeners to the thrilling notes of the Italian singers Grisi, Persiani … One of the rooms has a ceiling by ET Parris, a painting of The Four Seasons which shows groups of chubby putti romping among spring flowers and sheaves of corn. I GOT a disconcerting glimpse of my past this week when I took my mother to visit the house in West London where she and my father lived when I was born. I hadn’t been back since I was a child and was unprepared for the sheer scale of the place, a neo-classical edifice which can only be described as a mansion. Would Jacques Chirac have been a man she could do business with, or would it have been war across the Channel? With Mr Chirac, as with Mrs Thatcher, war means war..

It is worth reflecting what might have happened if the two of them had coincided in office. If there are no common values, no acknowledged national purpose, then the nation is destined to be weak.One of the central economic arguments of his election campaign – that France’s Fr300bn domestic budget deficit could be substantially reduced by reducing unemployment, and that subsidies for job creation would be money well spent – was not a left-wing argument coming from a right-winger (as critics claimed), but consistent with Mr Chirac’s “one-nation” philosophy.The exact nature of his one-nationism is still to be determined, for there is a distinct hint in some of his pronouncements that some are more equal than others. On the one hand, he is stripping the presidency of some of its frills and expenses, and trying to bring the government and the governed closer. On the other, he retains a strong and very formal conception of the dignity of the presidency.His protection of his Prime Minister, Alain Juppe, over his privileged housing arrangements (elegant Paris flat rented at a council house price from the city) included a defence of privileges for the elite because of their “special value” to the nation.Mr Chirac appears to see no contradiction, just as he apparently sees no contradiction between his stated support for the European Union and the Western alliance, and his insistence that membership (preferably leadership) of these groups should not impair France’s national interests in any way.In Europe, this combination of plain speaking, populism and national superiority was perhaps last seen in Margaret Thatcher. His emphasis on national honour and independence has been clear down the years. And if the social concern on which he arguably won the presidency is new-found, he would not see it as incompatible with his wish for France to be great again A strong country, he argues, needs a strong, united people.

It just tended to be obscured by the voters’ preoccupation with what they saw as France’s pressing problems: unemployment and social divisions.Nor is there reason to complain of inconsistency in his views. The trend of his foreign policy – making France’s voice heard in the world, protecting French interests and sovereignty – was evident in his pre-election statements. Paris says it has no intention of intervening in Algerian affairs, but perhaps Mr Chirac is not so remote from matters Algerian as his staff profess.No one should be surprised by Mr Chirac’s conduct. Then, his conduct of state affairs had fostered an atmosphere in which public pronouncements stressed no compromise, while wheeling and dealing went on behind the scenes.Last week there were reports that secret talks in Paris between the Algerian military government and its Islamic fundamentalist opponents broke down shortly before the assassination of an Islamic cleric and the St Michel bomb. John Major – already isolated and perhaps inured to this sort of thing – was unfazed, speaking happily of “a breath of fresh air” from the Elysee.Even the bomb at St Michel station last week, it could be argued, might have had something to do with Mr Chirac. It was, after all, when he was prime minister a decade ago that France suffered its worst outbreak of terrorism, from the Middle East.

Better no agreement than a fudged agreement seems to be a Chiraquien principle, one that has so far cost Europe its united-against-Britain front on the single currency and the Schengen agreement abolishing border controls, and has also tarnished the Franco-German alliance.Between his first Euro-dinner in Paris and the final press conference at Cannes, Mr Chirac delivered himself of some plain speaking (“insults”, said the targets, off the record) towards the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Greece. Another direct statement that Mr Chirac’s France was not to be messed around with.Nowhere has Mr Chirac’s contempt for diplomatic niceties been more apparent than in matters European. It might also have been diplomatic, but the timing smacked of a different sort of diplomacy – a statement of power by a leader who considered himself equal to any on the world stage.He has remained unmoved by the ensuing outrage, and has now publicly reiterated on at least four occasions the reasons for his decision (the “reliability and credibility” of France’s nuclear deterrent), and has said it is “irrevocable”.Not content with this, Mr Chirac ordered the French navy into action against the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior II, 10 years after French commandos killed a Greenpeace photographer in the original Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. He promised in his election manifesto that he would consider the question, and once elected he took precisely four weeks to make up his mind, announcing his decision on the eve of a trip to America to visit Washington and the United Nations and to attend the G7 summit in Cannes.