Françoise Giroud, a French writer and politician, died on January 19th, 2003, aged 86. Giroud's weapon to give more pace to French life was language. During her long life she worked in films, was a journalist and a government minister. The thread that linked these jobs was a way with words. For many French people she became an addiction, whether they agreed with her or not. She edited two magazines entirely new to France, 'Elle' and 'L'Express,' France's first weekly news- magazine, which was a challenge to xenophobic French. In 1974 Jacques Chirac, the then prime minister, created for Françoise Giroud the new job of minister of women's affairs. She was later made culture minister. But although she came to be described as a feminist, she was never a campaigning American-style sister. Nor was she in the philosophical mould of Simone de Beauvoir. More practically, she sought to help French women find their way through what she called "the fog" of a male-run world. In her book "I Give You My Word" she tells of being arrested towards the end of the war by the Gestapo on suspicion of helping the resistance. She was released and her confiscated watch was returned to her by a helpful German. She had little education to speak of. She left school at 14 and worked first in a shop, then as a typist, after her father, a journalist, died and her mother had no money. Or, it could be said, she gradually acquired a broad education through reading. Two of her heroines were Marie Curie, a pioneer in the study of radioactivity, and Alma Mahler, who gained rather more notorious fame as a result of her love affairs.