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www.iol.org.uk FEATURES The passionate Francophile Baroness Shephard tells Jessica Moore about her 'love affair' with language Inside the Peers' Entrance to the House of Lords are rows upon rows of coat racks. A mishmash of light summer jackets and luggage of varying sizes hangs from labelled hooks. 'Lord Monks' reads a dog-eared sticker. It feels very much like a school cloakroom, albeit a terribly grand one. 'Exactly so!' agrees Baroness Shephard of Northwold jovially. 'A school cloakroom in a castle!' She then points to the antique wallpapers and elaborate The good Shephard gilding of the corridors and chambers to illustrate the point, as we jostle past Lords, Viscounts and other fairytale characters. The bubble bursts. 'Give us a kiss!' a middle-aged man heckles. The 72-year-old Baroness isn't fazed. She obliges him with a fond peck on the cheek. 'That's Lord Hennessy,' she nods. 'A great friend.' She is clearly a popular figure, and a natural conversationalist. 'I did French with Latin at Oxford and I have never regretted doing languages. Ever,' she declares. 'I was hooked on the French language, French literature, and on France in general – and, to a lesser extent, Latin. It's been a love affair really,' she beams. 'First of all with language and everything to do with language – words, resonances, order and grammar, vocabulary, history of language; all of those things – and at the same time, a tremendous love affair with France, which lives on to this day.' Perhaps unsurprisingly for a woman who has dedicated her career to politics, first as a Cabinet Minister and now as Chairman of the Association of Conservative Peers, an understanding of French politics went hand-in-hand with that love affair. 'I keep a close eye on French affairs. I read Le Figaro, listen to French radio, have an enormous range of friends in France. France was my paradigm, really, for institutions, constitutions, history, events, attitudes towards democracy. I can't imagine my life without that presence.' Gillian Shephard was first elected to the UK Parliament in 1987. She was Secretary of State for Employment in 1992, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1993, and Secretary of State for Education, 1994-1997. Thereafter, she was Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, and then Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment. In 2005, she became a Life Peer. Her fortunes, both professionally and academically, are self-made. Her father was a small livestock farmer in Cromer, Norfolk; her mother went to grammar school but left at the age of 14. 'She was terribly keen on French though,' the Baroness says. It was her primary school head teacher, however, who prompted a deeper romance with France. 'She had a connection with a French family in the Bordeaux area, and while she certainly couldn't speak French – when she tried she had an appalling accent! – she had an interest in French ways. She would tell us how they used to make salad dressing – which to our minds was salad cream – at the table. It seems insane! Then she told us that in France they ate snails and that they would buy bread every day. This was just after the war, so it was unimaginable. People used to "My teacher told us that in France they ate snails and would buy bread every day. It was unimaginable"