France

 Paris Sitting on a crowded café terrace in Rue Saint-Antoine on a sunny evening last week, there was no sense of national crisis. When a motor scooter backfired, no one jumped. The constant racket of police car sirens was ignored. The National Assembly had just voted for the third extension of a seven-month ‘national emergency’ following terrorist attacks that left 130 dead and 368 injured. But talk of violence in the streets generally referred to the police; have they been too rough with the student demonstrators who are conducting all-night sit-ins in the nearby Place de La République? The student demonstrations have been provoked by the government’s new employment law, which

A fresh start in a new gym in a foreign country. The serious young gym attendant didn’t speak a word of English, so we did the best we could using my limited French. He weighed me then asked me to hold a device that measured my body mass index via my palms — how it does that I can’t even begin to guess — and he carefully wrote down the result on the induction form. Had I ever exercised before? I had, I said, but about three years ago, after a cancer diagnosis, I had lost heart and stupidly given it up. What kind of exercise did I used to

The tourist information office of the small French country town looked closed. Peering between the posters on the window glass, I couldn’t see a light on inside or furniture or people. I tried the door anyway and it gave way. The office was open. In the corner of a large expanse of tiled floor was an office desk. Seated at the desk was a woman aged about 20 absorbed in a fat paperback called Think and Grow Rich. My appearance on her office tiles seemed to astonish her. She leapt out of her chair and almost ran to welcome me. Did she speak English? I said. Yes, of course. How

On Monday morning I was in a blind panic. The deadline for posted manuscript entries to the Daily Mail First Novel competition is 1730 GMT on Saturday 16 April. But I was in France again. A letter sent from France to Blighty takes between three days and a week. Therefore I had to get my entry — 5,000 words in 12 point Times New Roman, double-spaced, and a 600-word synopsis of the rest — posted by midday at the absolute latest. The winner gets £20,000 and a book deal if he or she can faithfully promise to deliver the finished novel by 31 October. On Monday morning my problems were

There was a moment during the war when De Gaulle was being more than usually impossible. Roosevelt, furious, asked Churchill to convey his feelings. The PM summoned the Frenchman, who arrived, took off his kepi and sat down. Churchill launched into him. Unfortunately, the tirade was not recorded. By all accounts, few prosecution cases have been expounded more forcefully. It was a masterpiece of eloquence which lasted for 45 minutes. Throughout, de Gaulle was impassive: not a flicker of facial muscle, let alone emotion. Churchill came to a final flourish, then stopped and glared. In response, de Gaulle rose to his feet, put on his kepi, saluted, turned and left.

While I was in Provence, my hostess and I went out one day for a walk in the hills. We walked for three hours and didn’t encounter another soul, and apart from a couple of blue-tits, nor did we see any wildlife. At one point we came to an old stone monastery chapel perched on a ledge with aerial views of forested hills and mountains stretching away to the horizon and not a sign of the 21st century visible. Architecturally, the chapel exterior was simplicity itself, suggesting a holy order of utmost austerity. My hostess had been here before, she said. In fact she makes a point of coming up

This is perhaps not the best moment in history to extol migrants from the developing world or Eastern Europe, but the fact remains that without them my life, and I suspect the life of many other people in the West, would be much poorer and more constricted than it is. A migrant is not just a migrant, of course. Indeed, to speak of migrants in general is to deny them agency or even characteristics of their own, to assume that they are just units and that their fate depends only on how the receiving country receives them and not at all on their own motives, efforts or attributes, including their

Before we left for Sunday lunch at the Les Deux Garçons restaurant, Aix-en-Provence, I checked the reviews on Tripadvisor. I’m mildly addicted to Tripadvisor restaurant reviews — I enjoy their Pepys-like unselfconsciousness — and never before have I seen opinion so equally divided between praise and censure. According to the dissenters, Les Deux Garçons is ‘a worst nightmare’, ‘absolutely horrible’, ‘a fraud and a scam’, ‘a theatre of clowns’, ‘the perfect place to while away a few hours — if you are on death row’. The waiters are ‘imperious’, ‘churlish’ ‘stuck-up’, ‘aggressive’, ‘abusive’, ‘absolutely unbelievable’ and ‘the rudest outside Paris’. Michelle from London reported that they had ‘looked down on

In the Foreign Legion’s Museum of Memory at Aubagne, near Marseilles, I examined the kit, weapons and uniforms from the Legion’s formation in 1831 up to the present day. Uniforms from the Crimea, the Mandingo war, the Mexican expedition,the second Madagascar expedition, the first world war, the Algerian war, the first Gulf war: there they all were, displayed in glass cases. My museum guide was Maurice, a proud Legion veteran. Green Legion tie, natty silver-buttoned regimental waistcoat, close-cropped head and an impressive row of medals on his chest. You only had to look at his lean face to see how fit he was. A tour of duty in the Légion

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that if Britain left the European Union, France could stop allowing British officials to make immigration checks on the French side of the border, and, his spokesman predicted: ‘You have potentially thousands of asylum seekers camped out in northern France who could be here almost overnight.’ Mr Cameron denounced the way prisons are being run by his administration: ‘Current levels of prison violence, drug-taking and self-harm should shame us all.’ Junior doctors went on strike again for 24 hours. Twelve men of Pakistani heritage were jailed for up to 20 years for the rape and sexual abuse of a girl when she was