Going Topless Is Still Seen As Tacky - Yet For Women It's Truly Liberating: SAMANTHA BRICK Explains Why British Women...

In 2014, my husband Pascal and I got into our car and headed south, checking into a gorgeous bijou hotel on the Med. 

The hotel was small and each room had a private terrace overlooking the sea. I'd already wriggled into a string bikini and, after getting settled on the sun lounger, I whipped off my top, applying sunscreen all over. 

Now look, I'm not an exhibitionist and I certainly wasn't trying to make anyone feel uncomfortable. The person doing the tutting had to peer — and I mean really peer — over the screen in order to see me. 

It turned out she was one half of a rather staid couple — he in red trousers, she in a roomy floral dress — who were having early apéros on their terrace. And while on this occasion I tied my top back on, it annoyed me, later, that I'd given in to her. 

But there was a broader cultural reason for that tut of disapproval, too. She was British and, on the subject of topless sunbathing, the gulf between French and British women is as broad and chilly as the Channel. 

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