Pretentious, moi? French think we are

Britons are snobbish, pretentious, impolite and French-hating - according to people in France.

Two French intellectuals asked 500 French adults aged 18 to 60 what they thought of the rest of Europe - and while they were mostly complimentary about many countries, the British received a string of insults.

The Belgians were said to be well-mannered and welcoming, the Dutch were broadminded - if a little slack - the Portuguese were brave and hard-working, the Swedes well-organised, ecologically-minded but unfriendly, the Polish were defined as brave and industrious, while the Italians were described as exuberant.

The report, by French journalist Jose-Manuel Lamarque and Parisian politics and sociology professor Olivier Clodong, also looked into what other Europeans thought about France.

The British thought the French were stubborn, chauvinistic, molly-coddled by the state and lacking a sense of humour. The Germans saw them as pretentious and frivolous, the Dutch found them unreliable and thought they talked too much and the Swedes saw them as immoral, disorganised and dirty.