Paris
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…
The cult of Sappho in interwar Paris
Philip Hensher describes how Paris became a magnet for literary-minded lesbians in the early 20th century – where they soon caused quite a stir
Has Notre-Dame ever been a symbol of unity for the French?
From the kitchen of her apartment on the Quai de la Tournelle in Paris, the journalist and broadcaster Agnès Poirier…
Michael Moorcock: I feel I’ve been cheated by the British state
Back to Texas to prepare for guests arriving for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Once again we left our Paris home not…
The carnage inside Charlie Hebdo: an eyewitness’s account of the attack
It is almost five years since two trained jihadists went into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and killed…
The poetry of sewers
‘Welcome,’ says our guide Stuart Bellehewe, with an imperious sweep of his arm, ‘to the cathedral of shit.’ Before us…
The serious games of the Oulipians
Have you heard of the Oulipo? The long-running Parisian workshop for experimental writing? Even if you haven’t, you might have…
Dau is not just a pretentious fraud – it’s rather disgusting
The best booers, in my experience, are the Germans. There’s real purpose and thickness to their vocals. Italians hiss. The…
Dau is the strangest and most unsettling piece of art to come out of Russia in years
Dau is not so much a film as a document of a mass human experiment. The result is dark, brilliant…
Let them buy Teslas! How Macron became the enemy of the French
Emmanuel Macron is supposed to be the cleverest man in France but he has painted himself so completely into a…
The gilets jaunes have become a symbol of resistance worn with pride by the downtrodden
I met a friend for lunch in Paris last Sunday. He and his wife had come up from the countryside…
Lautrec often made the stars in his posters look appalling – but they kept coming back
You don’t need to be much of a psychologist to understand the trajectory of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Born to aristocratic…
Love is blind, but lust is not; William Boyd’s 15th novel reviewed
William Boyd’s 15th novel begins well enough. In 1894 Edinburgh, a 24-year-old piano tuner is promoted to the Paris branch…
To reflect on the brilliance of your writing, you had better be sure of its brilliance
Nominative determinism is the term for that pleasing accord you occasionally find between name and profession: the immigration minister named…
A brief history of unicorns
After the England football team beat Tunisia at this summer’s World Cup, they celebrated with a swimming-pool race on inflatable…
The view from Paris: ‘Why are Brexiteers so stupid?’
‘Problème est masculin; solution est féminine,’ says Brigitte, the adored French teacher at the British embassy in Paris. Good way…
The best and most extensive exhibition on Napoleon in three decades
The Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides in Paris has a new exhibition that I believe to be the best…
Are European cities really so much better than our own?
Early on in his introduction of nearly 60 pages, Owen Hatherley writes: ‘I find the Britain promised by Brexiters quite…
Diary of a revolution: Paris 1968, through the eyes of Nancy Mitford
In May 1968, civil unrest, bordering on revolution, exploded on to the streets of Paris. Student protesters and striking workers…
