Paris
A free spirit: Clairmont, by Lesley McDowell, reviewed
Even by the Villa Diodati’s standards, Claire Clairmont was unconventional, seducing Byron when she was 18, and giving birth to their child after a possible affair with Shelley
The crimes of Le Corbusier
We can all sympathise with his desire to end bad, ugly new building, but too many of his own projects have had to be scrapped for functional reasons
Rooms with little left to view: the queer spaces of E.M. Forster and others
Diarmuid Hester goes in search of the private places of eight remarkable figures from the 20th century, to find only Derek Jarman’s cottage preserved intact as a shrine
The illiterate poet who produced the world’s greatest epic
With its carefully calibrated sense of time, the Iliad is clearly the work of a single man and not a ‘rolling snowball’ of different contributions, argues Robin Lane Fox
The Franco-Prussian war changed the map of Europe – so why are we so ignorant about it?
Rachel Chrastil describes how Bismarck, relying on Gallic pride to provoke the war he wanted, ensured that France would fight without a single ally
Love in the shadow of the Nazi threat
Florian Illies describes the charged atmosphere of Europe in the early 1930s, as people grew increasingly desperate to celebrate their last chance of freedom
The rise and fall of bohemia
In the Kunsthalle Praha, a smart new gallery in Prague, a Scottish professor from UCLA called Russell Ferguson is trying…
The murder of Lola and the failure of Marconism
Last Friday, a beautiful 12-year-old Paris girl named Lola failed to come home from middle school. Later that evening, her…
The Osnabrück witch trials echo down the centuries
Absent mothers resonate in the latest offerings from two heavyweights of French literature. Getting Lost is the diary kept by…
The unpleasant truth about Joseph Roth
The Radetzky March must be one of the dozen greatest European novels – but its author was frighteningly unpleasant, says Philip Hensher
I’m a one-woman man
Gstaad There’s a fin de saison feeling around here, but the restaurants are still full and the sons of the…
The diary of a tortured man: Deceit, by Yuri Felsen, reviewed
Yuri Felsen, born in St Petersburg, was an exile in Riga, Berlin and Paris and died at Auschwitz in 1943.…
Paris's glittering new museums
The refurbishment of Paris’s galleries and museums continues apace, with money no object, finds Rupert Christiansen
The sad fate of Edna St Vincent Millay – America’s once celebrated poet
In June 1957, Robert Lowell attended a poetry reading by E.E. Cummings. Sitting dutifully and deferentially alongside him were Allen…
Disregarded for decades, Jean Rhys stayed true to her vision of life
Jean Rhys lived a vagabond life – but she wrote about gloom and squalor with luminous purity and a poet’s care, says Lucasta Miller
Unhurried and accomplished whodunit: ITV's Holding reviewed
A couple of years ago, I happened to read Graham Norton’s third novel Home Stretch. Rather patronisingly, perhaps, I was…
Anne Hidalgo’s socialist reign of error in Paris
A photograph, taken in June 2014, has become emblematic of Anne Hidalgo’s Socialist rule of Paris. In the picture stands…
Welcome to the Impasse Ronsin – the artists’ colony to beat them all
Rosie Millard is transported to the Impasse Ronsin, a tiny, squalid cul de sac in Paris’s 15th arrondissement that was once the centre of the modern-art world
Two hours of kitsch tomfoolery: Amélie at the Criterion reviewed
The latest movie to turn into a musical is Amélie, from 2001, about a Parisian do-gooder or ‘godmother of the…
From family home to mausoleum: the Musée Nissim Camondo
The potter and author Edmund de Waal revisits familiar terrain at an angle in his third book, Letters to Camondo.…
Nights – and wines – to remember in Paris
Some friends claim to be making marks on the wall to count the days until liberation. Ah, the forgotten delights…
Gabriel Matzneff: the paedophile who hid in plain sight
Until this book was published, Gabriel Matzneff was a respectable man. The French author may have written about his affairs…
In search of Noëlle: Invisible Ink, by Patrick Modiano, reviewed
At some point in his twilit, enigmatic novels of vanished lives and buried memories, Patrick Modiano likes to jolt his…
Beauty and the beast: Jane Birkin’s love affair with Serge Gainsbourg
I met Jane Birkin’s parents, who flit across these pages. Her mother, Judy Campbell, was an actress in Noël Coward…
Paris’s banlieues are burning once again
One of the persistent misconceptions of the riots that swept through France in the autumn of 2005 is that they…
