Years ago, a British man named Clive Cummings picked up the local newspaper in Burgundy, just outside Dijon, where he had moved to live with his family, and found a story about himself. His French was not particularly good at the time, so it may have taken him a while to decipher it. This, in translation, is how it began: “It took a century to get rid of the bloody English, and that was thanks to the grace and vigour of a certain Joan of Arc, who swore to boot the English out of France. The pressure group ‘Save la Bussière’ could have used a similar slogan when it determined to send Monsieur Cummings, purchaser of the abbey at La Bussière, near Dijon, back to his native island.”

The French are rightly proud of their traditions. So it was never going to be easy for Cummings to take over a 900-year-old abbey and turn it into a country-house hotel listed by Relais & Chateaux, with a Michelin-starred restaurant. But that’s what he has done.

Nor is his achievement unique. The UK accounts for France’s fourth largest source of foreign investment; nearly 2,000 UK firms are established in France. Across the country, individual Britons are meeting similar success in many of France’s most cherished cultural traditions: baking, bicycle-racing, wine-making, politics, high fashion, appreciation of the erotic, and, er, pop music. They’re taking on the French at their own game, and beating them.

Cummings was a child when he started working in his parents’ pub in Berkshire.

After school, he learnt his trade the hard way, washing pots, working as a waiter and as a chef. After running a catering company in London he went to work for his parents at Amberley Castle, their award-winning country-house hotel in Sussex.

After running Amberley for several years, he decided to do something for himself. He started looking around Britain for his own country-house hotel, but couldn’t find anything affordable. So he extended his search to France, where an agent told him about l’Abbaye de la Bussière. Founded in the 12th century – by an English monk – the Cistercian abbey had by the late 20th century become a drain on church funds. Few people wanted to be monks any more, so the place was turned into a kind of spiritual retreat, with rudimentary cells for visitors to stay in and 15 acres of parkland, including a lake, open to everybody. Cummings came to visit with his family, and on the same day agreed terms with the archbishop of Dijon.

But thousands opposed the sale. Many who signed a petition also gathered outside the gates to protest. “What they didn’t like,” Cummings says, perhaps over-simplifying a teeny bit, “was the fact that they could no longer drive in and park on the lawns, and take their dogs for a walk without clearing up after them. That had to stop. But they can still come in, as long as they’re a customer – all they need to do is buy an orange juice, or a coffee.” When the campaigners took their case to court, the judge threw it out.

For the first few months, Cummings lived alone out of a suitcase, moving from one cell to another as he gradually knocked them into larger rooms and fitted them out luxuriously. In 2006 the abbey opened with five rooms and another five approaching completion, whereupon Cummings’s wife, Tanith, brought their four children to join him in his new life in France – specifically, in a cottage in the abbey’s gardens. (His parents moved into another cottage: having recently sold Amberley Castle, they are doing up a nearby chateau for their retirement.)

Since then, Cummings has carried out extraordinary work. He dredged the lake, using the sludge to level the lawn, cut away low branches of ancient trees so that visitors can see across the park, installed a E300,000 sewage system, and started work on 10 new bedrooms in the eaves of the main building. He’s spent more than E5m, and is preparing to spend more, soon, converting the unused mill and orangery at the end of the garden. As well as moral support, he’s received financial backing from his parents – and that won’t be repaid for some time.

Like many Brits running businesses in France, Cummings has been confounded by the French attitude to work, particularly overtime. He has come to know French businessmen well but finds, though they share his grumbles about staff, and claim to support President Nicolas Sarkozy’s promised liberalisation of employment laws, they actually rather enjoy the French tradition of working not very hard.

French labour laws are among the most generous in the world. No employee can be expected to do more than 35 hours a week, and overtime pay is often 50% higher than usual. It’s also difficult in France to fire anybody. In 2006 the conservative government tried to change the laws to meet employers’ demands for more flexibility, but gave up after huge protests from students and unions.

Additionally, the French have more public holidays than us, and several fall in succession in spring, to Cummings’s great frustration. “One builder told me there were only six working days a fortnight and he couldn’t get the guys to come to work. I said, ‘Well, you can come in, can’t you?’ He said, ‘No, I’m going to be with my family.’ ”

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