The unenviable task of teaching de Gaulle English was taken on by a M. de Valence, a Mauritian working for the BBC.23 In fact at that time most members of the British elite spoke good French, and de Gaulle did not need to practise his shaky English too often. (De Gaulle occasionally liked to quote what he claimed Charles V had said on the subject of English: ‘One speaks French to men, Italian to women, German to horses, Spanish to God but who ever heard of one speaking English?’)
