​Former Rydal Penrhos pupil Elinor Davies recently secured an internship in Paris with the prestigious publishing house Flammarion.

Hearing about our Alumni discovering themselves and achieving success throughout their chosen fields will always be a source of great pride to everyone at Rydal Penrhos. The exceptional foundation they receive at the school fully prepares them for upcoming challenges, something that comes from a well-rounded education and outstanding support from staff.

Elinor Davies, who attended Rydal Penrhos from 2006-18, has thrived since departing the school with exceptional A Level results and many track and field records. After deciding to take a GAP year that was divided between au-pairing for two French families in Reims and teaching cookery to American teenagers in Camp America in Maine, the former Prefect then took her well-deserved place at Jesus College Oxford, which is regarded as one of the most illustrious higher education establishments anywhere in the country.

After two years of reading French, Elinor has now once again ventured abroad to gain further experience. She spent September to December as a student at the Université de Toulouse and has now embarked on a translating internship at the prestigious publishing house Flammarion in Paris.

Elinor, said: “Flammarion publish all sorts of books from novels to academic textbooks. I work in the picture book department which is basically any book that happens to have a lot of pictures (cookery, fashion, art, architecture etc.).

“The language itself is pretty much the same (with the exception of a few bits of vocabulary – ‘pain au chocolat’ becoming ‘chocolatine’ in the south, for example) but the accent is very different; it’s quite nasal in the south with some sounds being completely different to how I had learnt them in school and university.

“There is a form of Parisian slang called ‘verlan’ where the syllables of the standard French word are reversed (‘metro’ becoming ’trome’, for example) but I don’t think it is that popular anymore, a bit like the waning use of cockney rhyming slang.”