Sophie Pedder
speaker
103 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 31 Aug
Sophie Pedder’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But in reality, if you leave Paris and the big cities, France has always held a secret fascination for American culture.
Of the top ten box office hits in France last year, nine were American.
Disneyland Paris is Europe's only outpost of the theme park.
And you can even do line dancing classes there.
More recently, it's the success of modern country pop that has helped draw new recruits to the dance floors.
French line dancing tutorials on YouTube are set to Taylor Swift songs and other country hits.
I went to a couple of these village fets in France this summer and it's been a difficult time with the forest fires, with the drought and the heat wave, so it was particularly lovely to be able to see that people can still have a good time across the generations, line dance in the streets and enjoy their summer evening.
Le Pen's decision to run ends 15 months of uncertainty for her party, the National Rally.
Sophie Pedder is our Paris bureau chief.
It sets France up for a very unusual election campaign because the candidate has now been convicted twice in the first and second instances, although she's appealing.
A lot of twists and turns in the day, but at least now the campaign proper can begin.
Yesterday, the Court of Appeal in Paris upheld her conviction.
It handed her a three year jail sentence.
Two of those are suspended and one is to be served with an electronic ankle tag.
But crucially for Le Pen, and this is what really made the difference, is that the court shortened her ban on running for office and ruled that she'd already served the ineligibility penalty.
So that freed her to run.
Le Pen said last night that the ban had posed an enormous democratic problem and that she said it was now up to the people to decide.
She continues to claim she's innocent and she has said that she will now take her appeal to the highest court, the Cour de Cassation.
It's an extraordinary story.
It's the story of a family.
Showing 21–40 of 103 · page 2 of 6
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