well i would certainly agree with hugh schofield the bbc man in question and with the editor who included levy's remarks certainly they're very notable for the affair and of course levy is very eminent but what struck me about the original contribution was that it was sourced to the bbc in general 'the bbc notes' rather than to somebody at the bbc no british writer would ever do that because of course the bbc aims rather like wikipedia to provide balanced coverage and offers a representative range of views it would be rather like an english writer citing a remark of jean fran ois kahn's but sourcing it instead generically to marianne there are a number of british journalists who specialise on france of which john lichfield is my favoiurite this is jl on the houellebecq wikipedia affair he also wrote a very perceptive review of platform one of the few french novels i've struggled through in the original and which i thought was anarchically funny though i do finds 'wally' rather bleak i gather lives in ireland which is extremely curious thank you for responding