SO many of our well-travelled friends say, “Paris is my favourite city in the world.” I wish it were mine too, but it isn’t. I love its charm, excitement and layers of culture but, on other hand, I feel an outsider. No, the Parisians don’t make me feel an outsider even though they have a…
From the window of our little hotel in the Marais I look down into the fire station. The fire brigade are a fine bunch of fit-looking young Frenchmen. Before the weekend, in between callouts, they spent hours climbing up fire-truck ladders in fetchingly tight t-shirts and running shorts, to put up tricolor bunting. I was…
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the minister for women’s rights in President François Hollande’s new Socialist Party government, is by any measure an extraordinary person. The Moroccan-born daughter of a building worker, she is 34, has three children, became a councillor in Lyon in her early twenties to oppose Le Pen’s fascists and earned her political spurs as…
As our Euro-Star train from St Pancras was pulling into the Gare du Nord, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was arriving for dinner at the Elysee with the new Socialist Party President Francois Hollande. Today (Thursday) they both trooped off to Brussels for yet another Euro-summit. The whole Euro thing has become part circus, part nightmare….
Don’t be alarmed by the hue and cry over the remark by French President Nicholas Sarkozy to President Barack Obama that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is a liar. That scathing description of “Bibi” Netanyahu is widespread in the corridors of world power. Among the Israeli elite and its commentariat the contempt for the…
