No more puffs in Paris

One of the best things about Paris is that it never changes. The stone is always the colour of Champagne, the cabbies are always foul and Bernard-Henri Levi is always seated on the first table opposite the door as you go into the Flore.

Most popular

Matthew Lynn

Spain will regret its 100 per cent expat property tax

I’ve spent most of my adult life in Paris, and perhaps the thing I loved about it most is that one could never be unhappy there. Wretched, heartbroken, tragic, but never merely sad. All that was necessary was a noisette  and a Marlboro Light and suddenly one was Juliette Greco or Simone de Beauvoir-deliciously, adolescently, maudlin.

Yet now it smells wrong. Sunday was the first time I had been back since the smoking ban, and the cafes no longer smell of Gauloises and angst but of industrial air freshener and bitter despair.