A combination of rainy summers and European Union regulations had left the lentil producers of central France in the depths of despondency. Now they have a white knight to counter the gloom that had settled over their fields: Prince George.
Last week the young royal started at Thomas’s school in Battersea, southwest London, where the canteen serves such dishes as lamb ragout with garlic and herbs, pork stroganoff with red peppers and smoked mackerel on a bed of puy lentils.
No one seems to know whether he has eaten the lentils, or indeed if he likes them, but that does not matter. The mere disclosure that the Duke of Cambridge’s son had been within sniffing distance of the green lentils of Le Puy-en-Velay in central