Why are French kids’ school bags so heavy?
It’s that time of year again in Paris, when the cool breeze and light rain announce the arrival of the…
France is rediscovering its Catholic soul
The Pope is arriving in Paris like a rock star next month, taking centre stage at a mass rally of…
How Paris made the Mosleys
Parisians have suffered through four scorching heatwaves this summer, but none compares to the deadly canicule of early August 2003 when temperatures…
Inside France’s war against radical mosques
Another mosque in France has been shut down, this one in a bleak north Paris suburb that usually makes headlines…
Patrick Bruel and the death of French seduction
Patrick Bruel was once a heartthrob pop star whose dark brooding looks fuelled a ‘Bruelmania’ fever that swept through France…
My Paris neighbourhood has become a no-go zone
When I moved into Paris’s seventh arrondissement, I was not expecting to find myself living in one of the city’s…
Marine Le Pen’s return is a nightmare for French centrists
Marine Le Pen’s comeback has thrown France’s presidential election into disarray as rivals for the Élysée Palace scramble to revise…
What should Paris do about Hamza?
Armed with his water gun and foul language, a truculent 14-year-old Arab boy called Hamza has become the unexpected sideshow…
Why do the French have a problem with air conditioning?
In the French city of Nantes, the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the city’s long-anticipated railway station was a big event. The…
Paris’s Left Bank is dying
In the heart of Paris’s Left Bank, the Café de Cluny has witnessed many tumultuous events in modern French history.…
What will become of Paris’s ugliest building?
Parisians were recently treated to the impromptu spectacle of a shirtless 26-year-old man scaling bare-handed the 59-story Montparnasse office tower.…
The glorious revival of Paris’s English bookshop
Stepping into Smith & Son bookshop across from the Tuileries, my first instinct is to look for signs of change.…
What happened to Provence?
The best time to visit Provence, I always advise when asked, is in the spring before the scorching heat and…
The intertwined lives and deaths of Jean Genet and Simone de Beauvoir
A strange literary coincidence occurred in Paris exactly 40 years ago, on 14 April, 1986. In the small hours of…
