Charles Bremner has a fun article on his TimesOnline blog in which he discusses the indignant reaction in the French press to the suggestion—from the Times' Matthew Parris—that Tintin was gay.
Tintin, the eternal boy reporter, celebrates his 80th birthday tomorrow. Europe's most venerated comic strip hero is being feted across the continent and, thanks to an imminent Steven Spielberg movie, he is at last about to be introduced to Americans.
France has long adored Tintin as one of its own although his creator, Georges Rémy, known as Hergé, was a Brussels-based French-speaking Belgian. That may explain the indignation over the past couple of days over an amusing column by my Times colleague Matthew Parris. Matthew had the effrontery to recite a longstanding assumption in the gay world that the intrepid little foreign correspondent is homosexual. Read full article >>
