llion-franc plant in Valenciennes rather than in Britain. French companies are world leaders in tyres, cosmetics and yoghurts. Air France is the fourth biggest international carrier. The state is a major force in the highly successful European Airbus consortium, whose development is being steered by a Frenchman. A hundred space rockets have been launched from the base in French Guyana. lectricit de France is by far Europe's biggest exporter of power. A French firm has built the world's largest flight kitchen at Hong Kong's new airport; another has installed almost half the new telephone lines in China. The AXA-UAP group is the second largest asset manager in the world. The Socit Gnrale bank has snapped up one of the last City investment houses, Hambros, and France's second largest insurer, AGF, has managed to enlist German backing while keeping its French nature. At the same time, the luxury goods firm LVMH established itself as a top world player with its growth round the globe and its assault on Italy's Gucci. The French state even found itself owning a Hollywood film studio. France is the world's favourite holiday destination, attracting over 70 million visitors in 1998 and earning 175 billion francs from tourists. After all, which other country can offer the chteaux of Versailles and the Loire, the walled city of Carcassonne and the papal palace of Avignon, the jewel church of Vzelay and the Romanesque beauties along the pilgrim trail towards Compostela, the hilltop fortresses of the doomed Cathar heretics in the Pyrenees, the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims or Albi, the central square of Nancy or the Dominican church and hidden medieval town-houses of Toulouse, the Spanish-accented charm and Fauvist colours of the anchovy port of Collioure on the Mediterranean and the turn-of-century elegance of Deauville on the Channel? From the rough beauty of the Cvennes and the towering peaks of the Alps to the lavender fields of the Drme...
