SAINT CENERI-LE-GEREI, France (AFP)
It could be any sleepy rural town hall in any of France's countless and picturesque country villages. But the mayor, or rather "monsieur le maire", is British.
"I'm Ken Tatham, welcome to Saint Ceneri," said the tall neatly bearded Yorkshire-man.
France's western Brittany region has seen a veritable explosion of British inhabitants over the past decade. According to a government statistics office, around 10,000 Britons live in Brittany today compared with just over 5,000 in 1999.
Tatham however is France's only English mayor. He was first elected in 1995 and has been at the heart of political life in this tiny village of 150 inhabitants ever since.
But then Saint Ceneri is in the Orne department of northwestern France, which Tatham estimates has between 6,000 and 7,000 British inhabitants.
There was some friction, he said, when he was first elected. "The Earl of Arundel demolished the local castle and then 500 years later I turned up," he joked.
Tatham has lived in Saint Ceneri for 38 years and got involved in local politics in the early 1990s. "I could no longer vote in the UK and I couldn't vote in France and it really bothered me," he said.
To pursue his political ambitions, Tatham applied for French nationality which took around a year, and did not have to give up his British citizenship.
"I still feel as English as I ever. I'll never stop rooting for Leeds United," he said.
Re-elected with 80 percent of the vote in 2001, and planning to stand again in 2008, Tatham says "one of my most memorable experiences was being introduced to the Queen of England in my capacity as a French mayor."
Some 300 kilometres (190 miles) west of Saint Ceneri in the small Breton village of Plouzelambre, Keith Bradford has also made a success of his move to France. For the pas 14 years he has organised a French language Shakespeare festival.
"One year we did the 'Comedy of Errors' in the car park behind the fish market. Another time we did the Scottish play on top of a Dolmen," he says, his actor's superstition preventing him from mentioning the name of Shakespeare's highland tragedy "Macbeth".
The festival was a perfect way for Bradford and his wife, a professional flower grower, to find their place in the small village.
"I hesitate to use the word integration," Bradford says, arguing that it would be ridiculous for him to pretend he was French. He says he has rather tried to share his culture while respecting the values of his new home.
An hour away from Plouzelambre, 56-year-old Jacqueline Spence has been running a successful business as a hypnotherapist in the village of Saint Nicolas du Pelem since moving to France from Chester in Britain 16 months ago.
"I've had a few comments behind my back but in general the French people have been very welcoming. One of the local doctors has even referred patients to me," she said.
"In any case I have no plans to move back to the UK. Now it's all about capitalism and me, me, me," she added.
But the influx of anglophones to Brittany has not been without its problems.
In 2005 anger among local people boiled over at a heated demonstration in the central Breton village of Bourbriac. The protest was organised by a group called 'A-Stroll' (meaning "together" in the Breton language), which complained that property prices had been pushed up by buyers from outside the region, "at a time when Breton people are finding it hard to find somewhere to live."
At the time the protest was widely reported as an anti-English demonstration, an accusation one of A-Stroll's founders, Guillaume Bricaud, strongly denies.
"We folded A-Stroll after the media frenzy that surrounded Bourbriac. Being called a xenophobe is very hurtful," he said.
Bricaud said he was involved in a "class struggle", and had no particular animosity towards English people. He and his fellow militants were protesting against the practice of people coming to Brittany and buying holiday homes, which often remained empty for much of the year.
"Inland there are more English people, but on the coast the problem is French people from Paris," he said.
"One house is a right. Two houses is a privilege and we need to do away with privileges," he added.
Bricaud insisted that Britons who wanted to move to Brittany permanently were, "welcome here, just like anyone else."
©AFP
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