The little French town showing us all what it means to be British

Telegraph

7 hours ago

On the back wall of the old stone house overlooking a tiny square, a red Routemaster bus is holding pride of place. A small crowd of admirers is peering up at it – and at the other bright photographs pinned next to it on the brickwork.
In one, a woman in a floral dress is stretching out a white-booted leg on a bench at Regent's Park Tube station; in another, a dalmatian is sitting patiently in a railway carriage.
Some of the onlookers murmur in fascination, then stroll across the adjacent bridge that crosses the little river, in search of further visual stimulation – while others stay to stare a little longer, chattering animatedly.
This is not the Cotswolds that this combination of culture and rural nicety might suggest. And it is certainly not the London so visible in the images. In fact, it is a genteel French town of just 4,000 people, at the heart of Brittany. And this curious scene is nothing new.
It may not leap out from the map, but La Gacilly is a remarkable overachiever. Located 40 miles south-west of the Breton capital Rennes – and on the eastern boundary of the Morbihan department which shapes the lower edge of France's great western peninsula – it has a track record in both art and business that far outstrips its diminutive size.
For six decades, it has been the spiritual home of Yves Rocher, the luxury cosmetics brand whose titular founder was born in its midst in 1930.
And, as of 2004, it has burnished its reputation with a summer photographic exhibition that turns the town into a giant canvas.
Over the course of those 21 years, every festival has beamed a spotlight onto a different nation or region. Recent editions of the event have focused on Sweden, Iran, Eastern Europe, the Far East, Latin America and Australia.
But this year's – which began at the start of June, and runs until October 5 – bears a particularly intriguing title: 'So British!'.
The concept is simple. Twenty al fresco 'galleries' have been stationed around the town, many in the grassy spaces alongside the River Aff.
Half of them are devoted to the UK, in all its many idiosyncrasies. 'What does it mean to be British?', asks guide Enora Le Beus, who shows me around the site. 'That is the main question we are posing this year.'
If the audience for these images is largely French, the photographers who took them hail from the other side of the Channel.
Thus it is London-based Josh Edgoose (who goes by the Instagram handle @spicy.meatball) whose photos of his home city – a 21st century homage to the 'Swinging Sixties' – adorn the back side of the Maison Yves Rocher (the museum which tells the story of La Gacilly's most famous son with multimedia verve).
And it is Devon-born Cig Harvey whose hypnotic landscapes – a girl in a red coat in a snow-covered field; a golden labrador in a similar context – draw on the beauty of nature.
But it is the photographs which offer a less varnished glimpse of this sceptred isle that attract the most attention.
The tragic Tony Ray-Jones – who died of leukaemia in 1972, aged 30 – is given a posthumous platform, his sharp eye capturing a fading England in the seaside summers of the late 1960s: a contestant reapplying her lipstick at a Southport beauty pageant in 1967, a (much older) male judge ignoring her as he sips a cup of tea; an elderly couple, alone on an otherwise deserted Morecambe ballroom dance floor in 1968.
Martin Parr's lens traces a similar thread: a young brother and sister at New Brighton in 1983, their faces smeared with ice cream, the sky overcast. 'These, I think, are two great British traits,' Enora says. 'Ice cream, and grey weather. Both are appropriate for this festival, because we have the same things here in Brittany. Particularly the grey weather.'
There is glamour and glory too – not least a tranche of shots taken by music and fashion photographer Terry O'Neill, showing stars of the British rock constellation: Lennon and McCartney grinning impishly in the early days of Beatlemania; Jagger pouting at the camera; Bowie scribbling in a notebook; Amy Winehouse on stage, lost in the moment.
Nonetheless, while plenty of the local visitors can be heard humming along to Rebel Rebel and Jumping Jack Flash (piped through hidden speakers), they save their most visceral reactions for the earthier images.
I learn something about Britishness myself, as I peruse the section dedicated to Peter Dench's work – which includes a snap of a twentysomething couple in Bournemouth during the Covid summer of 2020, their shoulders lobster-red.
'Ah, les rosbifs,' giggles one observer – and, eavesdropping, I come to understand that a mildly disparaging term I had always assumed referred to the British predilection for a Sunday roast lunch is actually about our propensity for sunburn.
Still, it would be inaccurate to state that the predominant responses stirred among the French visitors are amusement and mockery. Indeed, the prevailing emotion seems to be a general bafflement.
Parr's brilliant image of five fielders trying to retrieve a ball from a prickly bush at Chew Stoke in Somerset in 1992 – an occupational hazard that every Englishman has probably endured at some point, but the non-cricket-playing Frenchman has not – might as well be of alien lifeforms for all the puzzled expressions it prompts.
A shot of pupils at Eton also causes furrowed brows; France abandoned the compulsory school uniform in 1968. Scenes from the coronation in 2023 and the wedding of Harry and Meghan in 2018 – doughty picknickers scoffing sandwiches from Tupperware boxes while sitting on Union Flag blankets – seem to be just as impenetrable.
'Mais porquoi?', one little girl asks her mother. Maman squints at the pictures, shrugs. 'C'est les Anglais.'
Equally, there are flashes of shared experience. Parr's 'Beggars' Banquet' – a 1996 photo of two enormous seagulls attacking a discarded punnet of chips at West Bay Beach in Dorset – sparks roars of laughter and recognition.
And the sense of appreciation continues at nearby restaurant Le Végétarium (attached to the Maison Yves Rocher), where the summer menu features coronation chicken, fish and chips – and fruit crumble.
Indeed, with luxury hotel La Grée des Landes trading on the Rocher connection to offer spa treatments and massages just up the hill, and the festival in situ until the autumn, La Gacilly could make for an alluring left-field mini-break during the coming weeks.
As could the wider Morbihan department, whose main historic site – Carnac, with its neolithic standing stones – has just received Unesco World Heritage status.
Of course, if you miss 'So British!' in 2025, you will have a second chance to see it in 2026. La Gacilly has an ongoing partnership with Baden bei Wein – a spa town, 25 miles south-west of Vienna, which puts its Breton friend's exhibitions back on display the following summer.
If the French are perplexed by royal marriages, dropped ice-cream cones and four-decade-old memories of Merseyside, is there any hope for the Austrians?
Essentials
EasyJet flies from Gatwick to Rennes from £67 return. Trains from London St Pancras to Rennes (changing in Paris) cost from €251 (£218) return, through SNCF Connect.