“At your service” really means something when you hear it at these hotels. Each one is known for offering exquisite hospitality, with talented teams that go above and beyond to impress grateful guests.

Capella Bangkok, Thailand

This “hush-hush hideaway” offers a “sleek and ultra-private” escape on the edge of the Chao Phraya River, said Condé Nast Traveler. Rooms have “heaps of space” and “fabulous” views, with select accommodations that include a private plunge pool. Each room is also assigned a Capella Culturist dedicated to ensuring guests fill their days with special experiences. That might mean booking a “meditation session with a monk from a nearby temple” or arranging a “chef-led street-food tour.”

Grand Velas Riviera Maya, Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Offering “unparalleled” service is a hallmark of the all-inclusive Grand Velas Riviera Maya, said Travel and Leisure. Every guest has a personal concierge they can “text at any time,” either with questions or to set up activities, dinner reservations, housekeeping and taxis. There are also “specialized” staffers to assist parents and guests at the pool and spa, “actively” helping by delivering drinks and snacks and moving umbrellas. Grand Velas Riviera Maya blends “old-world elegance” with “first-class luxury,” and the spacious rooms and hotel common spaces feel “upscale and chic without being stuffy.”

La Maison Favart, Paris

As one of the “prettiest — and wittiest — hotels around,” La Maison Favart in the 2nd Arrondissement “might be as close as you’ll get to heaven on Earth,” said Time Out. The “endlessly photographable” rooms are “sophisticated” with an “unapologetically feminine touch,” and many have views of the Opéra Comique. The 24-hour concierge team provides tailored hospitality, working with guests before they arrive at the property to ensure a perfect stay, and once a month posts a blog on the hotel’s website with restaurant, activity and experience recommendations.

The Leela Palace Jaipur, India

You can’t help but feel like royalty at The Leela Palace Jaipur, and that’s not just because of its grand nature. From arrival to departure, guests receive spectacular service that is “seamless and professional,” said The Independent. It starts by being greeted with “drinks and flowers,” and throughout your stay staff will continue to surprise you with special, personalized treats left in the room (once they find out what precisely you enjoy, expect to find it waiting for you). This is part of the regal hotel’s “classic Indian charm” and why so many guests are return visitors.

The Mark, New York City

At the glamorous Mark on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the service is “razor-sharp and friendly,” said The Times of London, and “small, innovative touches” like the “posh” Haute Dog Stand and express shoeshine from John Lobb “propel the Mark to the top of its game.” The concierge team is led by Maria Wittorp, who often tells guests, “our only limitation is your imagination.” They can set up just about anything, including a private Gilded Age Mansion Tour and Champagne-soaked after-hours shopping trips on Madison Avenue.

San Ysidro Ranch, Montecito, California

Ask, and you shall receive. Guests at the historic San Ysidro Ranch are encouraged to make the most out of their stay and let staff know their needs, whether that means a private boat charter or a special dinner inside the stunning wine cellar. The “five-star service” is one highlight of this “top-tier” retreat, where the beautiful gardens are “impeccably groomed” and visitors stay in “thoughtfully decorated” cottages, said Sunset. The attention to detail, right down to the customized letterhead waiting for guests in their bungalows, makes San Ysidro Ranch a “legendary” spot.

Royal Mansour Marrakech, Morocco

Every riad at this Marrakech “icon” comes with round-the-clock access to a personal butler happy to secure reservations, arrange tours and fetch necessities, said Condé Nast Traveler. In an “interesting” twist, staff move through the property through a network of “hidden tunnels and elevators,” which lets them respond to requests in a “magically discreet fashion.” This is exactly what you’d expect at such an “opulent” hotel, where “no detail was overlooked, from the sumptuous stucco work to manicured walled gardens.”

At the age of 88, David Hockney “is enjoying a volcanic burst of late energy”, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Times. Although he now uses a wheelchair, the artist continues to produce paintings at a prodigious pace; and, if anything, his work rate “seems to be accelerating”. Following his hugely popular retrospective in Paris earlier this year, he has returned to London to show off a “delightful and thrilling” selection of new work – under the title “Some Very, Very, Very New Paintings Not Yet Shown in Paris”.

The exhibition testifies to his “extraordinary vitality”. Bringing together interiors, still lifes and portraits, it’s “a blast of fearlessness, innocence and the uninhibited enjoyment of colour”. Hockney has always seemed to look at the world with “childlike curiosity”, and these recent pictures find him returning to life’s simple pleasures with renewed vigour. Whether he’s painting a pair of empty chairs – a nod to van Gogh and a touching tribute to absent sitters – or a display of fruit on a rumpled tablecloth in a Smarties-style palette, his colours “pop about with all the fun of a birthday party”.

Any Hockney show is worth visiting, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. This one is no exception; it certainly “has its moments”. A series of drawings of the moon the artist created on his iPad “feel as cool as an eye bath”: playing with the tradition of the nocturne, he “conjures a mood of mysterious serenity”, conveying his wonder at the beauty of nature through these “shadowy landscapes”.

Some of his acrylic paintings of furniture are “eye-popping”, all reversed perspective and exuberant colour: “chairs cavort wonkily about empty spaces and bunches of flowers explode like fireworks”. But, for all “the frenzied delight in colour”, they mostly seem like pale imitations of his greatest hits; the excitement “has vanished from paintings that look as if they’ve been dashed off in an afternoon”.

“The portraits are where this show fails the hardest,” said Eddy Frankel in The Guardian. Hockney now takes a pointillist approach to skin tones, “and the result is a bunch of bodies that look as if they’re covered in sores”: they seem more like “fresh corpses” than living humans. The exception is a self-portrait in which we see the artist painting from his wheelchair; the painting works “because it’s so vulnerable but also so funnily self-aware”. You can’t help but dwell on mortality here: where Hockney was once so assured, his brushstrokes now look “shockingly unsteady”, the compositions frequently verging on the chaotic.

Yet they couldn’t have come from another hand, and it’s oddly “affecting” to see one of the great artists of our time ageing before our eyes. We’ve seen a lot of Hockney exhibitions lately. Perhaps we don’t really need another one. Still, these new works, with their “wobbles” and colour and humour, “prove that he’s still at it, and he’s still got it, all these years later”.

Annely Juda Fine Art, London W1. Until 28 February

The Walmartification of French fashion is now complete, said Sophie Coignard in Le Point (Paris). To widespread Parisian disgust, one of our most glamorous department stores, BHV, is now officially home to the Chinese online juggernaut Shein: it was in this landmark building that the ultra-fast-fashion company opened its first-ever bricks and mortar premises last week.

Don’t look on this as “just another retail opening”, said James Tidmarsh in The Spectator. “It’s cultural surrender.” For more than a century, BHV has “embodied a certain Parisian ideal” of accessible luxury, craftsmanship and good taste. “Now it’s flogging throwaway polyester” stitched in exploitative Asian factories; that which, until now, was only available on Shein’s website alongside 600,000 other cheap goods. “It is proof that Paris, once the world’s fashion capital, is now renting out its soul to Chinese algorithms.”

French is ‘addicted to fast fashion’

We French are supposedly scandalised by Shein’s arrival, said Erwan Seznec in Le Point. And certainly Shein’s grand opening was assailed by angry crowds protesting against the Asian giant’s vile labour and commercial practices. These are well documented: a recent investigation revealed extensive evidence of forced labour, with workers in some factories forced to work 18-hour shifts for just £0.03 an item. And the discovery that child-like sex dolls were being sold on Shein’s website resulted in a threat to ban the website in France unless they were removed.

Yet for all the “virtuous rhetoric” and the snobbery, the French are still “addicted to fast fashion”: every single respondent in a recent survey admitted to buying clothing from a fast-fashion brand this year, whether it were China’s Shein and Temu, or more traditional European players such as H&M and Zara.

And fully 35% of French shoppers – enticed by its “rock-bottom prices”, targeted algorithms and “discounting techniques” – admit to having bought something from Shein itself last year, said Stéphane Vernay in Ouest-France (Rennes). They’re no doubt familiar with the accusations of deplorable behaviour levelled against Shein... “but who cares? The urge to buy is stronger.” Shein’s tills in Paris were ringing last week, and it now plans to open five more locations in France.

‘We’re soon not going to have any industry left at all’

You’d have thought Europe’s politicians would be trying to shield our manufacturers from this onslaught, said James Tidmarsh. Not a bit of it. In France and in the UK in particular, they’ve opened the door to the Chinese: they’ve handed our textile industry to companies such as Shein; they’ve opened our roads to carmakers such as BYD and MG – and they call it “progress”. Progress? Our manufacturers just can’t compete with these regulation-skirting companies. “We’re soon not going to have any industry left at all.”

Only the US president has clocked this “unprecedented trade offensive”, said Gaëtan de Capèle in Le Figaro (Paris). Trump has already “built a wall imposing a 100% tax on parcels from Shein and its acolytes”; shipments to the US have dropped 40% as a result. Yet for all “its unrivalled regulatory nit-picking”, Brussels won’t be able to halt the influx for another few years – by which time countless homegrown businesses will have gone to the wall.

France is marking the 10th anniversary of the attack by Islamist gunmen on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. They opened fire on 1,500 people on a night of co-ordinated terror attacks that also saw explosives detonated at the Stade de France.

The attacks, which left more than 130 people dead, were the “worst assaults” in France’s post-war history, said The New York Times, and they “inflicted lasting damage on the nation”.

What did the commentators say?

The slaughter “forever changed the country and its politics”, said Politico, “tipping the balance of protecting civil liberties versus ensuring public safety in favour of the latter”. A “slew of laws” were passed, including increasing the state’s “surveillance powers” and its “ability to impose restrictive measures” on its population.

The then president François Hollande called the attacks on 13 November 2015 an “act of war” and declared a nationwide state of emergency. But that “legal framework” gave the government “the power to ban protests and deter other forms of activism”, said France 24. For example, several dozen climate activists were placed under house arrest in 2015 for the duration of the Cop21 conference in December that year.

There will be "grief, poignancy and dignity” across France today, said Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator, but there will also be “delusion” among the “political elite” because France "is not united; it is divided”. Since 2015, France’s security service has “thwarted” 80 Islamist terror plots but there have been 50 attacks, 19 of which were “fatal”.

“Arguably,” said Andrew Hussey on UnHerd, “France has yet to fully reckon with the ideology that underpinned” the attacks. It represents a “shockingly direct challenge” to “Western morality and the West’s conception of justice”. France, “for all its secular earnestness”, has “yet to truly level with this fact”.

The nation could have descended into hate, but it has “held firm”, “clinging” to the slogan “you will not have my hatred”, said l’Opinion. A “litany” of subsequent attacks failed to trigger a witch-hunt against Arabs, just as the 13 November jihadists failed to “unite the Muslim community around them”.

What next?

Although Islamist terror remains a threat in the West, “much has changed” since 2015, said the BBC. The “disappearance” of Islamic State as a “major force” in Syria and Iraq means that the “wherewithal to conceive, plan and carry out complex terrorist projects is greatly diminished”.

The intelligence services have “become highly effective in controlling online radicalisation”, said Middle East expert Gilles Kepel, and are able to foil plots that are “often not very sophisticated”.

While the investigation into the Oct. 19 heist at Paris’ Louvre continues, scrutiny is now focused on the museum’s security measures — or lack thereof. Considered one of the most significant robberies in museum history, the theft of France’s crown jewels worth an estimated $100 million — including a sapphire tiara and emerald necklace from the imperial family — is not the Louvre’s first. And some believe it’s time to reinforce its defenses.

Several factors at fault

The elaborate robbery, which involved thieves dressed as workers and an electric cherry picker, has “raised significant questions about whether one of the world’s most famous museums could have been better protected,” said The New York Times. Much of the blame has been placed on the Louvre’s security camera system. The building’s exterior is “surrounded by cameras,” but there “were not enough officers to continuously monitor the feeds.”

Other factors include the museum’s ongoing construction, which experts say could have provided an opening for the thieves. Several “labor unions at the Louvre said they had warned that continual renovations, repair work and scaffolding for fund-raising events done on or around the museum made it hard for employees to spot suspicious behavior.” The “more we have exterior people working around the Louvre, the harder it is to differentiate who should be there,” Julien Dunoyer, a 21-year veteran of the Louvre’s security team, said to the Times.

And there were warnings before the crime. The museum’s security systems were “rated as outdated and inadequate by an official report written before the theft of crown jewels,” said The Times of London. And several areas within the Louvre are not covered by security monitors. In the “Denon Wing, where the Apollo Gallery targeted by the robbers is located, a third of the rooms have no CCTV cameras,” though the specific room the thieves looted did have cameras, said officials.

The future

Security updates may happen not only in France but also in museums across the world, as the heist “should lead all institutions that hold valuable items to assess their security measures,” said Northeastern Global News. Even many “up-to-date technologies need to be assessed against the low-tech methods” that the Louvre thieves used. The robbery may “rewrite museum security protocols,” Nikos Passas, a professor of criminology and criminal justice and co-director of Northeastern’s Institute for Security and Public Policy, said to the outlet.

The Louvre does have planned security upgrades. But more simplistic ideas are available. While “modern museum security is a complex and expensive affair,” there’s also an “intriguing 50-year-old mathematical problem that deals with this very issue,” said BBC News. It involves calculating the “minimum number of guards — or equivalently 360-degree CCTV cameras — needed to keep a whole museum under observation.” As museums “look again at their own security in the wake of the Louvre heist, it can do no harm to be reminded of the lessons” this problem has to offer.

What happened

French police have arrested the first suspects in last week’s brazen daytime theft of royal jewels from the Louvre, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said Sunday. French media reported that two suspects were arrested, but Beccuau confirmed only that “one of the men arrested was preparing to leave the country” from Charles de Gaulle Airport on Saturday evening. Four people carried out the heist.

Who said what

The theft of more than $100 million worth of historical jewels from the world’s most-visited museum “stunned France,” The New York Times said. The arrests were a “major breakthrough for French investigators, who are racing to find the thieves before the jewelry is dismantled and the rare stones and metals can be sold or melted down.”

The two arrested suspects are in their 30s and “known to police,” and at least one was “identified from DNA traces” recovered from the crime scene, The Associated Press said, citing a police official. Beccuau said she “deeply” regretted the “hasty disclosure” of the arrests, as it “can only harm the investigative efforts of the 100 or so investigators who mobilized in the search for both the stolen jewelry and for all of the criminals.”

What next?

Police can hold the suspects in custody for up to 96 hours before deciding whether to release them or bring preliminary charges. Beccuau said she would “provide additional information at the end of this period.”

‘What the Louvre heist exposes about Macron’s France’

Robert Zaretsky at The Washington Post

There is “never a good time for a government to have its pants pulled down by such rocambolesque escapades,” but for the heist at the Louvre in France to “happen at a moment when the nation’s politics border on the burlesque makes for especially bad timing,” says Robert Zaretsky. The “heist marks a moment that makes clear that the days of a president who would be neither king nor emperor, but instead Jupiter, are also numbered.”

Read more

‘Trump accelerates tensions with Venezuela — and risks a longer, messier crisis’

Javier Marín at MSNBC

Developments have “reshaped the U.S. posture towards Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro,” says Javier Marín. Whether this is “intended to pressure and divide Maduro’s inner circle without committing to open intervention, or to test the ground for a military intervention, is unclear.” But “one goal seems increasingly clear, an intentional attempt to detain Maduro, which could trigger a ‘regime change’ in Venezuela.” All “scenarios reflect Trump’s preference to position himself as the decider and the central actor.”

Read more

‘Why playing is good for you, according to science’

Cas Holman at Time

Playtime “isn’t just a frivolous pastime for children. It’s a powerful, even essential, tool for healing,” says Cas Holman. Play therapy has become a “well-established clinical practice. While most often used with children, it can benefit people of all ages.” In “adult therapy, play can serve as a form of release, a method of connection, or a tool for processing pain.” These “tools may be simple, but they can be transformative.” Play “even has documented physical health benefits.”

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‘The rare earths travesty’

Rich Lowry at the National Review

It will “take us years for the U.S. to make up lost ground in mining critical minerals, but this is a solvable problem,” says Rich Lowry. China is “exploiting its advantage in trade talks with the U.S., restricting the supply of rare earths to gain leverage.” The U.S. “must push on all fronts to address a truly dangerous strategic vulnerability.” These “materials are crucial for the manufacture of cars, smartphones, drones, medical devices, and, most importantly, high-tech weapons.”

Read more

What happened

A gang of thieves broke into the Louvre Sunday morning and stole 19th century royal jewels from the Paris museum’s Galerie d’Apollon. The entire heist took less than seven minutes, officials said, and was carried out in broad daylight, shortly after the world’s most-visited museum opened. The eight objects stolen included an emerald necklace and earring that belonged to Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon’s second wife, plus jewelry from Empress Eugénie and queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense.

Who said what

The thieves used a truck-mounted basket lift to access the second floor of the Louvre’s riverside facade, then broke in through the windows and smashed targeted display cases, officials said. “It was the most brazen — and possibly the most costly — theft ever staged at the Louvre,” The New York Times said. But “the crime, for all its speed, wasn’t without errors,” The Wall Street Journal said. The thieves “attempted but failed to set fire to their truck” and “dropped the crown of Empress Eugénie, with nearly 1,400 diamonds, before they sped away” on motorcycles. The crown was reportedly damaged.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the stolen items were of “inestimable value.” The recovered crown alone is “worth several tens of millions of euros,” Drouot auction house president Alexandre Giquello told Reuters. “And it’s not, in my opinion, the most important item.”

What next?

“We will recover the works, and the perpetrators will be brought to justice,” President Emmanuel Macron vowed on social media. Nuñez, who was Paris police chief until earlier this month, said investigators had a “good hope” of catching the thieves by studying surveillance footage and other evidence from the crime.

France’s tottering government is stuck in a hard place. Premier Sébastien Lecornu, in office only a few weeks, needs the backing of the country’s Socialist party to stay in office. But the party is demanding a new wealth tax on the country’s wealthiest citizens — and the rich are striking back.

The proposal would impose a 2% annual tax on the country’s biggest earners, “including their companies, shares of companies and unrealized gains,” said the Financial Times. France’s billionaire class says that is “insane.” A wealth tax is “deadly for our economy,” said Bernard Arnault, chief executive of LVMH and one of the wealthiest people in the world. But advocates say the tax would reduce the need for unpopular spending cuts and “ensure the rich pay their fair share,” said FT.

The wealth tax was inspired by economist Gabriel Zucman, said The New York Times. Zucman’s ideas also “align closely” with New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s push to raise taxes on that city’s wealthiest individuals. In both France and the United States, “people see that everyone pays a lot of tax, with one exception: ultra-high-wealth individuals,” Zucman said. One other commonality: Business leaders oppose Zucman’s ideas “on both sides of the Atlantic,” said the Times.

What did the commentators say?

Opponents of the tax say France’s budget woes are the result of the nation’s “profligate welfare obligations,” said Harrison Stetler at The New York Times. Another explanation is that “tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy” under pro-business President Emmanuel Macron helped cause the shortfall. The public generally believes the latter idea. One poll found that more than three-quarters of French respondents favor “targeted taxes on the ultra-wealthy.” Passing that tax would be both “savvy politics” and “smart economics.”

A wealth tax, its detractors say, is “not the kind of invention France needs right now,” Lionel Laurent said at Bloomberg. The proposal is “insanely popular with the 99.99% who wouldn’t pay it.” And the tax might not be worth the effort. One study suggested the tax would raise a mere €5 billion in new revenues for the French government. France already boasts the “highest tax burden and near the lowest income inequality in Europe.” A wealth tax would be “more placebo than magic remedy.”

Zucman has come under “intense attack by France’s billionaires” who have called his idea “communist,” Harold Meyerson said at The American Prospect. That might be true if the tax took 100% of their wealth, “but taking 2% falls 98% short of that.” A similar proposal from Democrats in America could help the public “in multiple ways.” One 2024 poll found that 80% of the public favored a corporate tax on “excessive CEO pay.”

What next?

Lecornu is the “fifth French prime minister in less than two years,” said Politico. He probably cannot muster support in the National Assembly for “tens of billions of euros of budgetary belt-tightening.” But he may have some room for maneuvering. If Lecornu will not get behind the wealth tax “but increases the minimum wage, we’ll take a look,” said an unnamed Socialist official to Politico.

Autumn’s new cookbooks are an admixture of new releases from heavy hitters and debut works from extremely personal restaurants in San Francisco and Paris. Some are optimal for weekend projects (charcuterie, anyone?), while others rely on a well-stocked pantry for turnkey meals.

‘Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love’

Samin Nosrat’s first cookbook, the lauded “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” was an anti-recipe manifesto that mostly elided recipes, providing instead blueprints, charts and thinkpieces to help the reader think like a cook. Nosrat’s long-anticipated sophomore book, “Good Things,” beats with the same teaching heart, but this go-round relies more on real-deal recipes. Across sections such as “Good Things to Welcome Others,” “Good Things to Keep Up Your Sleeve” and “Good Things Are Better Shared,” Nosrat lets her hospitable, knowing self shine so you can do the same. (out now, $45, various booksellers)

‘My Cambodia: A Khmer Cookbook’

Nite Yun first brought the flavors of Cambodia to the restaurant Nyum Bai in Oakland, California. Now Yun runs the restaurant Lunette in San Francisco’s Ferry Building, and her debut cookbook, “My Cambodia,” captures the flavors of her Khmer cooking. Yun’s famous pork noodle soup, a pomelo salad with shrimp and crispy shallot, and round mochi orbs filled with palm sugar and covered in loads of fresh coconut are some of the recipes starring in the book. (Sept. 23, $35, various booksellers)

‘On Meat: Modern Recipes for the Home Kitchen’

It has been eight years since Los Angeles chef Jeremy Fox published his first cookbook, “On Vegetables.” He has teased the eventual release of his comprehensive take on carnivorousness. It has now arrived and with it a collection of Fox’s ways with cured and smoked meats, along with sausages like merguez. Oodles of the recipes are projects; plenty of them are less involved. The throughline is always Fox’s precise point of view and zero-waste inclinations. (Sept. 24, $49.95, Book Larder)

‘Mokonuts: The Cookbook’

Mokonuts, the Paris restaurant run by Moko Hirayama and Omar Koreitem, has no peer in that city. A little Japanese, a mite Lebanese, some Italian and, of course, a touch French, the menu at Mokonuts wanders the world but feels like it could also exist nowhere other than Paris. The restaurant’s namesake cookbook shows you how to make some of Mokonuts’ most beloved plates, including labneh toast, tomato soup with crispy mussels and those world-famous cookies. (Sept. 25, $49.95, Book Larder)

‘Six Seasons of Pasta: A New Way with Everyone's Favorite Food’

Joshua McFadden is back; let the home cooks rejoice! His debut cookbook, “Six Seasons,” showed vegetable-loving cooks how to prepare vitalizing, big-flavored salads, mains and sides according to his organization of produce based on which seasons it grows in — two extra shoulder seasons beyond the normal four. His newest book, “Six Seasons of Pasta,” applies the same principle to dried pasta. There are new ways with his famous — and famously simple — pureed kale sauce, plus three variations on pasta fagioli and an endless array of seasonal pasta dishes. His co-author, Martha Holmberg, is a recipe whiz. You can be sure every recipe in this book will sing. (Sept. 30, $40, various booksellers)

‘Baking and the Meaning of Life: How to Find Joy in 100 Recipes’

Helen Goh is a pastry chef and spent many years developing recipes for the Ottolenghi empire in London. Now, she is launching her debut cookbook, “Baking and the Meaning of Life.” The recipes are a footloose compendium of all types of baking-adjacent items: Dutch baby with berries and yogurt cream, potato-garlic focaccia, chocolate mousse tart with poached pears. Goh convinces the reader that baking for your people is an admirable act. (Oct. 21, $40, various booksellers)

‘Something from Nothing: A Cookbook’

Dill, anchovies, brown butter, olives, turmeric: These are a mere few signature flourishes from the Alison Roman recipe vault. In Roman’s new cookbook, “Something from Nothing,” she wields those anchovies in a romano-bean braise with wine, serves roasted squash with dates warmed in brown butter and gilds chicken with turmeric and crushed olives. This is a pantry-centric cookbook that counts the boundless ways you can do the very most with the very least. (Nov. 11, $38, various booksellers)

‘Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America’

Cookbooks can be complex beings. Some feature faultless recipes; others sing a historical song. Some do both. “Turtle Island,” the latest book from the Indigenous Minnesota chef Sean Sherman, is about “both paying homage to the past and positioning Indigenous foodways as a path for the future,” said Bettina Makalintal at Eater. Sherman was raised on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, and “Turtle Island” honors his youth. But the book also shares the food stories and recipes of Indigenous people from across all of North America. “Turtle Island” is an essential work. (Nov. 11, $45, various booksellers)

When it's too hot and busy for sightseeing, try cooling off in a shady garden. These secret spots are far enough off the beaten track to avoid most of the crowds – and so beautiful that it's easy to spend an afternoon strolling along their winding paths and admiring their perfectly manicured lawns. Here are some of our favourites.

Camley Street Natural Park, London

Bustling King's Cross feels like an "unlikely place to find a verdant nature reserve", but that's exactly what you'll discover just over the canal from Coal Drops Yard, said Condé Nast Traveller. Moments from the station lies Camley Street: "two acres of thriving grassland, woods and wetlands". A "meandering path" leads you through the reed beds and marshes, which are home to an "impressive amount of wildlife". Be sure to stop off for a cup of tea and slice of cake at the charming cafe.

Dr Neil's Garden, Edinburgh

"Hidden and alluring", this beautiful haven boasts "cinematic views of Arthur's Seat", said Culture Trip. Situated next to Duddingston Loch, the neglected land was transformed into the garden it is today by local doctors Andrew and Nancy Neil back in 1963 so their patients would have an outdoor space to enjoy. The "secluded" spot is known as "Edinburgh's secret garden", and its flower-filled lawns have long been a source of artistic and literary "inspiration" for visitors to the Scottish capital.

Vrtba Garden, Prague

This pretty garden on Petřín Hill is "hard to find", said The Guardian. Visitors who make the effort to "seek it out are rewarded with baroque beauty". The Italianate garden – created around 1720 on the site of the Vrtbovský Palace's former vineyards – comprises three terraced platforms brimming with thousands of flowers and shrubs, and dotted with statues. Climb to the pavilion in the highest garden for spectacular views over the city.

Giardino degli Aranci, Rome

"The crush of Rome can be overwhelming," said The Telegraph, so escape the throngs of tourists with a stroll beneath the pine trees at this hidden gem. Located atop the city's Aventine Hill, the Giardino degli Aranci (Orange Garden) is free to enter. The sprawling garden is "part lookout, part sanctuary, with a staggering panorama of Rome's domes, rooftops, St Peter's Basilica and the Tiber River threading it all together".

Parc de Bagatelle, Paris

Tucked away in the Bois de Boulogne, this peaceful spot is a "mischievous hotch-potch of waterfalls, a grotto – even a Chinese pagoda – surrounded by stunning blooms", said The Telegraph. The park is home to a sprawling garden of more than 10,000 roses; visit during Week-end de la Rose à Bagatelle in June and "you'll have crashed Paris's most fragrant secret".

Centralbadet Garden, Stockholm

This "hidden courtyard garden" lies right in the heart of Stockholm, moments from the main shopping street, said The Guardian. Architect Wilhelm Klemming bought the property back in 1901, restoring the park and building an "affordable day spa" that remains open today. Expect "winding paths", an idyllic pond filled with koi fish and lots of "shady places to sit".

Kim Kardashian has appeared in a Paris court to give evidence in the case against 10 people accused of robbing her nine years ago.

The reality TV star stood for almost five hours in court on Tuesday as lawyers probed her about the events that unfolded in her hotel room in 2016. In her testimony, she described how her life had been "forever changed" by the robbery. "We never felt that we were unsafe before this," she said.

Kardashian was tied up and held at gunpoint by five men who forced their way into her hotel room and stole jewellery worth more than $10 million, including a $4 million engagement ring from her husband at the time, Kanye West.

Most of the possessions taken in the robbery, including the engagement ring, have never been found. Only two of the people accused of taking part have admitted their involvement, and only 10 of the 12 people who have been accused are standing trial. Since the robbery, one of the accused has died, and another, aged 81, has advanced dementia.

Some French media nicknamed the gang the "grandpa robbers" because the heist was "attributed to a group of veteran criminals", including some who "are in their 70s", said The New York Times.

What exactly happened?

The incident took place during Paris Fashion Week while Kardashian was alone in her hotel room at the Hôtel de Pourtalès in the Madeleine district of Paris.

At around 3am on 3 October 2016, masked men dressed as policemen, who had held up and handcuffed a concierge from the hotel, entered the reality star's room and, holding her at gunpoint, demanded she hand over her jewellery. They then "bound her and duct-taped her mouth before carrying her into the bathroom" in a "nightmare" that "lasted about 10 minutes", said Vanity Fair. The accused are said to have then fled the scene on foot and by bicycle.

Kardashian wanted to "flee as quickly as she could" and return to the US that night, so she gave evidence to the police in the early hours before leaving France on a private jet.

The alleged robbers were picked up by police around three months later after making "serious errors" in covering their tracks. They left DNA evidence, were caught numerous times on CCTV and dropped a "bag of jewels", some of which were picked up by a member of the public, said the BBC.

What has the court heard so far?

The trial has been going on since the beginning of the month and has mainly focused on the backgrounds and previous convictions of the accused. However, several witnesses have already taken the stand before Kardashian.

Those include her personal bodyguard, Pascal Duvier, who last week said he found Kardashian "crying hysterically" when he returned to the hotel after being called.

The hotel night receptionist, Abderrahmane Ouatiki, has also given evidence, telling the court that Kardashian was "terrified, in a state of hysteria" during the robbery. He described how he worked at the exclusive "no address" hotel for well-known wealthy people to help fund his PhD studies, as well as how he let the robbers in, believing they were policemen.

Ouatiki also said he feared both he and Kardashian would die in the robbery, but tried to remain calm, at one point yelling at her to shut up while he was at gunpoint, to defuse the situation.

Ahead of Kardashian's testimony on Tuesday, her stylist, Simone Harouche, who was sleeping in the room below, gave evidence, telling the court how she heard Kardashian "hopping down the stairs" to her room after the robbers had left, with "tape around her feet".

But the multitude of journalists gathered at the court were there to hear from Kardashian, who was questioned by multiple lawyers for more than four hours.

She said in her testimony that she "absolutely" thought she was "going to die" and that she would be raped, as she described the sequence of events in detail. She heard responses from three of the accused who all apologised for their involvement. She said she forgave Aomar Aît Khedache, who, now deaf and mute, had a letter to Kardashian read out to the court.

Who are the accused?

Two of those going on trial – 71-year-old Yunice Abbas and 68-year-old Aomar Aît Khedache – have admitted their involvement. The former has released a book about the robbery called "I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian" since being arrested, in which he "admitted his involvement, citing financial struggles and viewing the heist as his 'last job'", said Cosmopolitan.

Khedache, another veteran criminal nicknamed "Old Omar", has also admitted he took part but "denies being the mastermind" behind the plot.

Also standing trial is Didier Dubreucq, 69, a seasoned criminal, as well as Gary Madar, 34, whose brother has regularly provided transport for the Kardashians in Paris over several years. Madar is accused of passing on information to the criminal gang about Kardashian's whereabouts on the night of the robbery. He denies handing over information to another accused, Florus Héroui, 52, whom Madar worked for in a cafe.

Marc Boyer, 78, and his son Marc-Alexandre Boyer will also stand trial. The former is accused of providing the weapon used in the heist and the latter of being involved in the robbery itself.

Why has the trial taken so long to happen?

The long-awaited trial has not been as urgent because of the "defendants' age and health issues", which also meant they have "spent little time in provisional detention", said the BBC. The courts have also been working through a "backlog" of other cases, including "large terrorism trials", which has taken many years.

French courts often provide an "enquête de personnalité" on defendants, a personality background and family history to give jurors a sense of the person involved. The first to take the stand, Abbas, told the court that he regretted robbing Kardashian and the incident had "opened my eyes". He also said he wasn't aware of who Kardashian was at the time.

What happens next?

Kardashian is not scheduled to give any further evidence in the case following her lengthy appearance in court. The hearings are due to end on 22 May, with a verdict handed down on 23 May. Some of the defendants could face up to 30 years in prison if found guilty of the most serious charges.

Few hotels can rival the Shangri-La Paris for its views of the Eiffel Tower. The building was built in 1896 by Prince Roland Bonaparte, Napoleon's grandnephew and last male descendant of the family. Many of its main rooms are classified as historical monuments, including the grand salon, modelled on the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, but with Napoleon I's gold bee emblem in bas relief visible throughout. Funnily enough, the prince's main apartments don't face the Eiffel Tower, because it was widely considered an eyesore at the time. Fortunately, most guest rooms have breathtaking views of it. From my aptly named Eiffel View Room I was able to enjoy the nightly tower light show, so close it felt as if I could almost reach out and touch it.

Eating and drinking

The hotel's restaurant Shang Palace, Paris's only Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant, is another draw. It might seem strange to come to one of the world's great culinary capitals to eat Chinese food, but what food it is. Chef Tony Xu acquired his expertise in his home city of Chengdu, China, where he also earned his first Michelin star.

We started with a selection of classic dim sum, all of which were familiar but made to a level rarely experienced outside China. Next was a revelatory ice plant salad – a vegetable from Inner Mongolia that contains natural crystals, giving it a pleasing, crunchy texture. We also enjoyed an elevated fried rice with lobster, asparagus and brown rice, taking the ordinary to the extraordinary. And, of course, don't miss the Wagyu beef – a short rib with tofu braised until unctuous in a rich sauce fragrant with star anise.

A great way to get a behind-the-scenes look at how it is all made is to have a dim-sum lesson in the kitchen. Here you will find the best chefs from China, each a master of their own station, from the wok man and the Peking duck master to our own dim-sum teacher, who trained for 15 years before he could be called a master. We made steamed pork and prawn dim sum in a pastry dyed red with beetroot juice. The pastry itself was the most technically challenging part, with the beetroot juice having to be heated to precisely 70C to make the gluten in the wheat and cornflour become pliant enough to knead and roll out. Our efforts were less than expert and, despite the patience of chef Xu and his dim-sum master, we definitely needed the pre-prepared dough they had on stand-by.

Apart from ingredients impossible to source locally, the chefs go to great lengths to procure most of the produce from France. Across all the restaurants in the hotel they focus on using the best local and seasonal ingredients, including the Wagyu beef, which comes from a farm in Normandy – the first farm in France to produce purebred Wagyu. We visited it with the hotel's executive chef, Quentin Testart. He cooked us possibly the best barbecue I've ever had with delicious cuts of beef served alongside simply grilled local vegetables, local wines and amazing bread and cheeses, including the Neufchâtel, a heart-shaped soft cheese made from unpasteurised cow's milk and one of the oldest cheeses in France. Also with us were the farmers who, with two local vets, have spent years developing the perfect Wagyu beef cattle which are fed on a strict natural diet and are free to graze in the rich pasture.

Things to do

The hotel is in the 16th arrondissement, one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in Paris and a foodie's dream. If you're after more traditional fare go for lunch at Le Stella, a typical Parisian brasserie full of locals enjoying the freshest oysters, seafood platters, escargots and other classics of French fare. Another popular lunchtime haunt is Breizh Cafe, serving crepes and galettes made with organic Breton buckwheat. I had wafer-thin galettes with ham, comté, an organic egg and generous servings of Bordier butter, an outstanding freshly churned butter made with organic French milk.

If you'd like to take this butter home then just around the corner is the Marché couvert de Passy, a wonderful food market that is still used by locals rather than being overrun with tourists. Or go to La Grande Epicerie, a veritable gastronomic temple to the best produce on offer where you can find whole fridges dedicated to glorious butters, the best freshly baked breads and patisseries, alongside everything else you could wish for. Don't miss the cellar with its selection of the finest champagnes, wines and spirits.

After all that food and shopping, returning to Shangri-La Paris was a welcome relief. Set in Roland Bonaparte's stables is a swimming pool bathed in natural daylight thanks to the French doors leading onto the terrace. As well as a gym and fitness area there is the spa, Chi, offering massages and treatments based on traditional practices from Asian cultures reflecting Shangri-La's heritage.

The journey

Laden down with food and drink there's only one way to travel. Instead of the usual hell of airport travel with its endless queues and luggage restrictions, we caught the Eurostar from the heart of the city with bags stuffed with wines and other produce. Travelling Eurostar Premier means we skipped all the queues and settled into the spacious seats to enjoy the immaculate service. After 30 years, they've updated their food offerings with the input of a renowned sommelier, a fine French pastry chef and two Michelin-starred chef Jérémy Chan, reinventing the menu with a focus on bold flavours and a celebration of locally sourced seasonal ingredients. It was the perfect end to our gastronomic tour, travelling in comfort and ease. I can only apologise to my fellow passengers for the rather pungent bag of the finest French cheeses.

Natasha Langan was a guest of Shangri-La Paris and Eurostar

Spring is a time for renewal, and not only in nature. Fresh new exhibitions are opening at museums around the world, with an emphasis on collaborations, cross-cultural exchanges and family bonds.

'The Forbidden City and the Palace of Versailles: China-France Cultural Encounters in the 17th and 19th centuries,' Hong Kong Palace Museum, Hong Kong

The "courts of Beijing and Versailles were fascinated by one another" during this era, Christie's said, and their "enlightened rulers" facilitated "extensive exchanges in science, art, culture and philosophy." This exhibition continues the cultural diplomacy, with around 150 artifacts from the Hong Kong Palace Museum and Palace of Versailles. One item in the collection, a perfume fountain from the 1700s owned by Louis XV, is made of porcelain produced in China and bronze mounts likely from France, a "testament to the exchange of craftsmanship between the two countries." (through May 4)

'Kotobuki: Auspicious Celebrations of Japanese Art from New York Private Collections,' Japan Society, New York City

The Japan Society is ahead of the curve with "Kotobuki," a showcase of treasures rarely seen by the public. Many of the objects on view, like a set of six panels from the 16th century, will one day be displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and other institutions, but you can see them now at this exhibition thoughtfully curated by the late Dr. Miyeko Murase, a scholar of Japanese art who recently died at age 100. Additional "Kotobuki" items include paintings, calligraphy, baskets and ceramics from the 12th through 21st centuries. (through May 11)

'Matisse and Marguerite. Through her Father's Eyes,' Musée d'Art Modern, Paris

Henri Matisse's eldest daughter, Marguerite, was his "favorite model," The Guardian said, the person he would "return repeatedly to paint" throughout his career. Her visage appears in many of the more than 110 works on display in "Matisse and Marguerite. Through her Father's Eyes," which includes paintings by both Matisses, engravings, sculptures, drawings and ceramics.

Marguerite's "face is familiar," but most people do not know much about her, like how she joined the French Resistance during World War II and was tortured by the Gestapo. This exhibit aims to change how the world knows her. (April 4 through Aug. 24)

'The Visionary Art of Minnie Evans,' Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

One of the most important creatives to come out of North Carolina, Minnie Evans felt called to a life of art, once stating that a voice told her, "Why don't you draw or die?" Taking inspiration from her native Wilmington, Evans' work is "characterized by bold colors, symmetrical mandala-like patterns and such recurring images as eyes, angels and otherworldly animals," the Wilmington StarNews said. Sixteen of her multimedia pieces will be shown during "The Visionary Art of Minnie Evans," alongside letters and postcards that explain how nature and spirituality guided her work. (May 10 through Oct. 26)

'We Felt a Star Dying,' Kraftwerk, Berlin

In celebration of 100 years of quantum mechanics, French artist Laure Prouvost collaborated with philosopher Tobias Rees and scientist Hartmut Neven to create "We Felt a Star Dying," an exploration of how this science shapes humanity's understanding of reality. Using cutting-edge quantum research and a quantum computer, Prouvost transformed "abstract ideas, theories and frameworks into tangible images and sensory experiences," Dazed said, which is "no easy task." The installation features sound, sculpture, scent and video. (through May 4)

What happened

French President Emanuel Macron Tuesday announced plans for a major renovation of the Louvre in Paris, the world's most-visited art museum, including moving Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" to a dedicated room, with a separate ticket, in a new part of the museum.

Who said what

The Louvre's last major refresh, in the 1980s, added I.M. Pei's glass pyramid entrance and prepared the museum to accommodate 4 million visitors a year. Last year, 8.7 million people visited the Louvre, most of them standing in long, noisy lines to catch a brief glimpse of — and likely a selfie with — Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile behind her protective glass.

Macron has been seeking a "new cause with which to assure his legacy" since he lost control of parliament last year, the BBC said, and his "much-praised leadership" in rebuilding Notre Dame Cathedral "appears to have whetted his appetite for a similar grand projet at the Louvre." At the same time, "concerns about overtourism achieved a critical mass" globally last year, The New York Times said, though "efforts to limit visitors in tourist hot spots have had mixed results, at best."

What next?

The remodel, slated for completion in 2031, will also add more restrooms and restaurants and a new entrance, at an estimated cost of about $800 million. Visitors from outside the EU will be charged higher entrance fees next year.

The Mona Lisa will be moved to a new space at the Louvre following warnings about overcrowding and crumbling infrastructure at the Parisian museum.

Speaking in front of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece yesterday, Emmanuel Macron said the famous work will have a "special space" as part of what he called "a new renaissance" at the venue.

Leaks and buckets

Around 75% of the museum's 30,000 daily visitors go to see Leonardo da Vinci's painting, but the experience has "become an endurance test", said the BBC, with a "constant crowd being funnelled through" and having "on average 50 seconds to observe the picture and take photos".

Earlier this month, the Louvre's director Laurence des Cars told the French government that the pyramid was "structurally unable to cope" with visitor numbers that now reach more than nine million a year.

She warned of "worrying temperature swings which endanger the conservation of works of art" and water leaks. The pyramid, which serves as the main entrance, also tends to amplify noise, making the space uncomfortable for both visitors and employees, des Cars said.

An employee told France24 that, "on a daily basis", there are "a lot of problems with water infiltration via roofs and broken pipes", and "when there is heavy rain, water run-off sometimes reaches paintings on display". To deal with leaks, said another employee, staff often "end up putting buckets in offices".

Macron's new Renaissance

Speaking at the Louvre, Macron set out details of his New Renaissance project, which includes an international competition to design a second entrance to relieve the growing pressure of visitor numbers beneath the famous glass Pyramid.

He said the overhaul would not cost the French taxpayer "a single centime", because the renovations, which will cost an estimated €700 million to €800 million (£587 million to £671 million), will come from the museum's "own resources".

But he had bad news for art lovers from the UK: he said visitors from outside the EU will have to pay more than those from within the bloc to help fund the changes.

Misguided snobbery

The decision to move the Mona Lisa is a "misguided act of snobbery", said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. High visitor numbers are a "wonderful headache for a museum to have", and moving the famous work to a "special hygienically isolated gallery" where "les idiots" won't "bother more cultured visitors" may ruin the Louvre's "ecosystem as a place where high art becomes popular culture".

An Italian politician has called for the celebrated painting to "return home" to Italy, said The Times. In an official note, Francesca Caruso, culture chief for the Lombardy region, said that "we are ready to host the Mona Lisa".

But Macron's powers have been "significantly curtailed" since he lost control of the French parliament, said the BBC, so he's been looking for a "new cause" to "assure his legacy".

There is a place for bare bones hotel rooms — just not on this list. These six accommodations are a feast for the eyes, with ornate woodworking, dramatic draperies, lavish wallpaper, gilded frames and other over-the-top touches. Stepping into each one feels like entering a human-sized jewel box.

Arq Pichola by The Leela Palace Udaipur, India

The Leela Palace Udaipur "needs no introduction," Elle India said, as it has "become synonymous with luxury, defining the very essence of grandeur." The property's newest collection of villas, Arq Pichola, offers the same ritzy experience, with expansive views of Lake Pichola. Deep blue lapis stones, gold-plated ceilings and brass-inlaid wooden floors are among the glittery design elements that pay homage to India, along with traditional Thikri art on the walls.

Maison Proust, Paris

Opulence is the polestar at Maison Proust. The hotel takes its inspiration from French writer Marcel Proust, with "lavishly furnished Belle Époque-style suites" and a "sublimely elegant salon/bar," Condé Nast Traveler said. Rooms are named after Proust's circle of friends and filled with "19th century paintings galore" and thousands of vintage books. The rich jewel tones and deep brocade add to the hotel's romantic feel, and in the spa, the "swoon-worthy Moroccan-style heated pool exudes unpretentious luxe at its best."

Mining Exchange Hotel, Colorado Springs

The Mining Exchange Hotel offers a vintage take on elegance. More than a century ago, this was a stock exchange for precious metals and today it is a "glamorous addition" to the downtown Colorado Springs scene, FOX 21 said. Elements of its past are apparent in the rooms, from the exposed brick walls to vaulted ceilings, alongside new additions like warm leather furnishings and bold patterned wallpaper and bed frames. Every type of sleeper is comfortable; each room comes with two firm and two soft pillows.

Royal Mansour Casablanca, Morocco

A few steps from the Old Medina, in an Art Deco skyscraper, is the rejuvenated Royal Mansour Casablanca. Its "sheer splendor" can "feel a little overwhelming," Vogue said, but soon your eyes will "adjust to all that shimmer and all that marble." In the guest rooms, marble walls and rich wood paneling plus patterned rugs and drapes come together for a sumptuous look accented by "exquisitely lacquered wooden desks carved into elegant modernist curves" and "delicate glassware and ceramics created by local artisans in smoky caramels and golds." When you are ready for dinner, head to the elevators and go up to the equally swanky Le Sushi Bar and Le Rooftop.

The Maker, Hudson, New York

No two rooms are alike at The Maker. The 11 accommodations, spread across three buildings, have their own themes but are tied together by commonalities like rich woodwork, fireplaces, stained glass windows and original art. One standout is The Architect suite, which "could have been the apartment of some Bauhaus luminary," Travel and Leisure said. The "best part" of it is the "massive — like, swimming-pool sized — bathtub, made using two slabs of Roman black marble."

The Witchery, Edinburgh

The Witchery offers maximalism at its finest. Each of the nine suites in this Edinburgh charmer feels like its own cabinet of curiosities, filled to the brim with antiques, tapestries, statues and baubles. Book the Inner Sanctum for an over-the-top experience, as you must "climb the stone turret staircase" to enter this accommodation "swathed in crimson, claret and port," Condé Nast Traveler said. Everything is grandiose, from the "claw-footed, roll-top bath" to the "huge four-poster bed made from an old church pulpit." The Witchery is also known for its baroque Original Dining Room and candlelit Secret Garden featuring a painted ceiling.

London's South Bank is these days unrecognisable from how it would have looked in the late 19th century, said Florence Hallett on the i news site. Back then, the area now dominated by the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre was "a crush of factories billowing filth, smoke and steam from giant chimneys, accompanied ... by a cacophony of animals and machines".

The hellish scene was a source of great inspiration to Claude Monet, who visited three times between 1899 and 1901 and painted dozens of pictures of the view from his room at the Savoy hotel. A successful exhibition of 37 of these works was staged in Paris in 1904, but his plans for a second showing in London never materialised: most of the paintings had been sold and buyers were reluctant to part with them.

Now, 120 years on, The Courtauld Gallery has finally realised Monet's ambition. Its new show brings together 21 of his Thames views from collections "scattered across the world", reuniting them "just a couple of minutes' walk" from where they were created. Hung together across the two main exhibition galleries, the works feel both "incredibly familiar" and uncannily odd: "no reproduction can recreate Monet's brushwork". The result is a "revelation".

The paintings gathered here "capture effects of light refracted through London's peasoupers" exquisitely, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. For Monet, the weather conditions created by atmospheric pollution in the city were "as dramatic as the aurora borealis", and while his "misty, mysterious" visions of London may owe something to Turner and to Whistler, they are "gorgeous" nonetheless. He makes the Houses of Parliament – depicted from across the river – look "as magical and insubstantial as a palace in fairyland", while the surface of the Thames is animated by "fluorescent streaks" of "sage, turquoise" and "salmon-pink". When the factory chimneys themselves make an appearance, they pop up "wraith-like" through the gloom.

Seen together, these works, painted "in large, broad strokes, layer upon layer of iridescent colour", form a "symphonic whole", said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. The "majesty" of each is enhanced by its neighbours, and the artist's "exceptional sensitivity to minute atmospheric nuances" is brilliantly showcased. Five "dynamic" views of the then-new Charing Cross Bridge see it turned into a "weightless" phantom, variously disappearing into mist or illuminated by "light-streaked steam from passing trains". One view of Waterloo Bridge, meanwhile, transforms the traffic over the thoroughfare into "dabs" against "a lilac blue haze". These "pivotal and original" pictures "render city life as we experience it as ephemeral, fugitive, blurry moments". Monet and London is an "enthralling and immediate" show, which immerses us in his "spectacular vision of the city".

The Courtauld Gallery, London WC2. Until 19 January

What happened

Tom Cruise and Billie Eilish helped draw a close to the 2024 Paris Olympics on Sunday night. The star-packed closing ceremony highlighted French artistry and included Cruise descending from the roof of the Stade de France and riding out carrying the Olympic flag toward Los Angeles, host of the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Who said what

France "closed out its 2024 Games just as they started — with joy and panache," The Associated Press said. Los Angeles will have a challenge topping Paris, which made "spectacular use of its cityscape," but "the City of Angels, like the City of Light, showed that it, too, holds some aces."

Cruise's "Mission: Impossible" stunt ended with a prerecorded video of the actor skydiving into Hollywood and a Venice Beach concert featuring Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. The French band Phoenix played in the stadium and gold medal swimmer Léon Marchand brought the Games to an end by blowing out the Olympic flame.

What next?

The U.S. finished the Olympics tied with China in gold medals — 40 each — but holding a 126-91 lead for total medals. The Paralympics begin on August 28.

The Paris Olympics got off to a dramatic start today when arsonists conducted a series of attacks that have caused widespread disruption across France's high-speed train network.

On the day of the 2024 Games' opening ceremony, the state-owned railway operator SNCF said there had been a "massive attack aimed at paralysing the network". Fires were started along the lines connecting the capital with cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east.

The attacks are the latest obstacle that the Games' organisers have encountered on the road to Paris 2024.

What did the commentators say?

Organisers will be hoping that the "spectacle" of the sports themselves can "drown the detail, cost, greed and waste" that have so far surrounded the Games, said The Guardian's chief sports writer Barney Ronay. 

The threats to "Olympic primacy" are now "existential", and it "needs to re-establish itself as a dream factory and a producer of moments". Because of the pandemic, the "last really significant Olympic moment" was Usain Bolt winning gold in Rio "eight whole years ago".

The role of Paris is to "fix this" and perhaps there is "something to be taken from Parisian coolness". That's one way of describing the mood. Emmanuel Macron's remark that the French "need to re-enthuse" about the Olympics, combined with a poll that found 44% of Parisians think the Games are a "bad thing", reflect just how low expectations have sunk.

The Games are "already an expensive nightmare for many locals and tourists", said CBS News. "If you're planning on coming to Paris for the Olympic Games… do not come! Do not come," one resident warned in an online rant. "The city of Paris is making it hell on earth."

Naturally, the greatest fear is of a terrorist attack, on either the athletes or the spectators, said Sky News, and a "huge amount of effort has been put into controlling movements around the city". There are also concerns that Russia will "cause trouble" and a 40-year-old Russian man was arrested on suspicion of planning to destabilise the Olympics. Authorities said he could face up to 30 years in prison, a "hint at the gravity of the accusations against him".

The prospect of industrial action will "hang over the whole games", with strikes threatened by workers "ranging from dancers at the opening ceremony to Uber drivers". And to add to the uncertainty, France "remains a country without a functioning government".

But pre-Games negativity seems to be part of the deal. Prior to the 2012 Games, many in London were "dreading" the event, said the BBC. Locals feared the Games would "cause chaos, disrupt business and make life more difficult for many people". Once the Games started, though, the mood lifted dramatically. Hugh Robertson, a former minister responsible for London 2012, told AFP that "there is always a moment that comes when people realise what a wonderful shop window they are for a country and they swing behind the Games". With expectations so low, Paris might not have to do much to pleasantly surprise the doubters.

Success will be judged ultimately on its legacy for the city. Paris should follow London's example and "embrace the ability to repurpose spaces and infrastructure" that are "already staples of their communities", said Fast Company. The French organisers should also use the Games as a "motivator" to improve their cities not only for the tourists who will "naturally flock in", but for their "long-term residents as well".

But the extent to which London achieved that second aim is contested. Twelve years on, the "promises of legacy housing" have "yet to be fulfilled", said Inside The Games. The main beneficiaries of London's Olympic housing legacy have been wealthier professional groups, but affordable housing is "conspicuous by its absence". Nearly 12,400 homes have been built in and around the Olympic site, but only about 1,000 are affordable, which is "hardly anything".

So perhaps it's London's failures that Paris should learn from. Although there were "high hopes" to create a "cultural hub" around the Olympic village in Stratford, east London, said The Telegraph, "in reality, the greatest legacy for many is understood to be the Westfield shopping centre". In contrast, the Paris organisers hope they are "building for the long-term".

What next?

The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics takes place on the Seine today, with boats carrying athletes and dignitaries along almost four miles of the river. Around 300,000 spectators will watch the action on the water.

Robertson said this will be a key moment in the long-term journey. The opening ceremony is important for the success of the Games because it "sets the tone" for the entire event. If it starts the Games "in the right way" then that "allows you to concentrate subsequently on the athletes".

A trip to Paris is not complete without a visit to one of the city's many pâtisseries. From creamy eclairs to colourful macarons, when it comes to sweet treats the French are in a league of their own. 

It's tempting to stop at the first place you stumble across; you'll pass countless windows piled high with pastries and cakes that look almost too pretty to eat. But for baked goods that are a cut above the rest, here are some of the very best patisseries in Paris. 

Boulangerie Utopie

Locals and tourists alike flock to this tiny neighbourhood bakery in the 11th arrondissement to sample its "exotic flavours", said Melissa Liebling-Goldberg in Condé Nast Traveller. For the "ideal antidote to overly sweet cakes" try the roulé sésame – an "unexpected creamy-savoury concoction" made with activated charcoal and black sesame seeds.

boulangerieutopie.com

La Pâtisserie du Meurice par Cédric Grolet

Avoid the "maddening" queues at Cédric Grolet's dedicated patisserie at Opéra for this tranquil "jewel box of a shop" at Le Meurice hotel, advised Condé Nast Traveller. The culinary master (named the World's Best Pastry Chef at just 32) is known for his "exquisite" sculpted fruits (which look just like the real thing) and freshly baked raspberry tarts.

dorchestercollection.com

Tapisserie

Bertrand Grébaut and Théophile Pourriat – the duo behind the Michelin-starred Septime – take a "no-nonsense approach to sweet treats" at Tapisserie, said François Blanc in Time Out. The seasonal tarts and silky vanilla flan are both "rustic and delicious" – and you can't go wrong with the fontainebleau (a traditional dessert made with sheep's cheese).

tapisserie-patisserie.fr

Arnaud Larher

This is a wonderful spot for "revisiting the classics", said Time Out. Among the highlights to look out for at the renowned pastry chef's shop are the "decadent" baba au rhum and "cloud-like" mille-feuille.

arnaudlarher.com

Stohrer 

"You haven't lived until you've had a kouign-amann from Stohrer", said Dayna Evans in Eater. The "epitome of pastry", the sweet Breton cakes are "caramelised to a deep amber" and have a wonderful flaky, crunchy texture. If they've run out, opt for a classic choux pastry religieuse instead.

stohrer.fr

Bontemps 

At this charming pastry shop in the Marais, the "nostalgic sablé" (a crumbly shortbread-style biscuit) is "elevated to new heights", said Eater. Choose from bite-size biscuits "perfect for nibbling on the go" or heftier sablés brimming with an array of tasty fillings from lemon curd to candied chestnut.

bontemps.paris

Chambelland

Finally, said Condé Nast Traveller, this "excellent" bakery in the "trendy" Oberkampf neighbourhood caters to the gluten-free crowd. Be sure to try the pâtisserie's "undisputed showstopper", the marquise popincourt – a lemon meringue tart that's available throughout the year.

chambelland.com

Famous attractions across the globe are grappling with the problems of overtourism as the travel industry bounces back from the pandemic.

Venice last week introduced an entry fee for day-trippers, and now the world's most famous artwork may be moved to an underground room at the Louvre, while a town in Japan is planning to block views of Mount Fuji.

'Perpetually crammed' gallery

Up to 10 million people a year visit the "Mona Lisa" at the Louvre, crowding into the Paris gallery where "she gazes out from behind 3in of bulletproof glass", said The Times. Many visitors queue for up to two hours to spend an allotted 30 seconds in front of the piece and "come away feeling cheated".

The painting's present room – the Salle des États – is "perpetually crammed", with up to 25,000 people on a busy day, some of whom have described the experience as "torture" in online reviews.

Laurence des Cars, the director of the Louvre, has suggested moving "Mona Lisa" to her own basement room, to make the visitor experience more satisfying.

"It's high time this queen of the Louvre was overthrown," said Laura Freeman, chief art critic of The Times. Most people don't even "look at the Mona Lisa or her smile, they just want a souvenir snap with their back to the picture", while ignoring the room's other "masterpieces by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese". Banish her "to the basement, crank up the air-conditioning, stagger the tour groups and ban the cameras".

'Jostling tourists looking for likes'

In Japan, visitors have been "flocking" to the town of Fujikawaguchiko, at the foot of Mount Fuji, after travel bloggers began posting videos and pictures of the "epic" 3,776-metre landmark framed above a local supermarket, said The Telegraph.

The area outside the chain store has been "taken over by jostling tourists looking for likes", to the "dismay" of locals. Visitors often "lie in the road" or block the traffic as friends take photographs, with a 26-year-old Moroccan tourist hit by a car last week. Others have climbed onto roofs.

The "juxtaposition of the soaring volcano" and the "banal sight of one of Japan's most ubiquitous shops" have made the site so popular that the town, in the Yamanashi region, is "at its wits' end over the behaviour", said the BBC.

The local council is now set to erect a screen measuring 65ft wide and more than 8ft tall, to "deter social media-hungry snappers", said The Telegraph.

A move to 'long-term sustainability'

Other "strict new measures sought to curb overcrowding" around the world include the new €5 daytripper fee to enter Venice's historic centre, a ban on new hotels in Amsterdam, and a potential entry charge to the Plaza de España in Seville, said the i news site.

And Barcelona has removed a bus route from Google Maps in a bid to reduce large tourist numbers from a popular area of the city.

Many of the measures follow demands from local resident groups. "The protests in the Canary Islands are the most recent, and perhaps loudest, example of a tide of dissent against tourism that encroaches on the lives of residents".

Ultimately, said Travel and Tour World, combating overtourism will depend on prioritising "long-term sustainability over short-term gains, ensuring that travel remains a positive force in the world for generations to come".

The flame for the Paris 2024 Olympics has been lit in ancient Olympia and will be handed to the French organisers in Athens on Friday 26 April after an 11-day torch relay through Greece.

After a night in the French embassy in Athens, the flame will then travel by boat to Marseille, where its procession through France will begin on 8 May. 

When will the Games be held?

The opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics will be held along the Seine on Friday 26 July, but the sporting action kicks off 48 hours earlier. There is preliminary stage competition in football, rugby sevens, handball and archery on Wednesday 24 July and the Games will run until 11 August.

There are 329 medal events across 32 sports, with most of them being held in Paris. The surfing, however, will take place in Tahiti, an island in French Polynesia nearly 10,000 miles away from the Olympic Stadium (the repurposed Stade de France in Paris).

How many nations are taking part?

Around 10,500 athletes from 206 National Olympic Committees will compete. Team GB finished fourth at the Tokyo Games in 2021 with 64 medals, 22 of them gold, just one below their total medal haul from London 2012.

Ones to watch

Britain will win 66 medals this time, including 13 golds, according to a forecast by Nielsen's Gracenote. Among the Team GB athletes to watch are Keely Hodgkinson, who hopes to go one better than her silver medal in the 800 metres at the Tokyo Olympics, the 15-year-old skateboarder Sky Brown, who won bronze last time aged 13, and Britain's 1500m world champion Josh Kerr.

Familiar names lining up for Team GB will include the three-time Olympic gold medallist Max Whitlock in gymnastics, and diver Tom Daley, who is returning to competition after a two-year absence.

The United States is expected to win the most medals overall at Paris 2024 – 123, according to Gracenote's Virtual Medal Table. Sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson could star on the athletics track, and Hunter Armstrong will be fancied to do the same in the swimming pool.

China is expected to finish second in the medals table, with teenage diving sensation Quan Hongchan and table tennis star Ma Long among those fancied for places on the podium.

What political issues are there?

France "doesn't want politics to tarnish its big Olympics moment", said Politico. "Good luck with that," said the news site, because the chances of a "politics-free nirvana this summer look slim", or "even non-existent".

Among the political problems overshadowing the build-up to the Games are "the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas conflict, a dispute over public transport, terrorism, homelessness, furious booksellers on the Seine" and "even a surfing wave in Tahiti".

Although Russian and Belarusian athletes will be allowed to compete as neutral athletes, they will not take part in the opening ceremony, said the International Olympic Committee. In response to this ruling, Vladimir Putin plans to unveil a "World Friendship Games" in Russia later this year, which is "quite the name coming from the president who launched the invasion of Ukraine", said HuffPost.

The conflict in the Middle East is also expected to cast a shadow over proceedings. Given the controversy over Israel's attacks on Gaza, the ruling about Russian athletes means "accusations of inconsistency are set to dog Olympic bosses with regard to Israeli athletes", said Politico.

Meanwhile, there is controversy in Tahiti, which will host the surfing competition. Locals on the French Polynesian island have objected to the construction of new infrastructure because of its potential negative environmental impacts on coral reefs.

How will these Games be different?

There will be several new features for this Olympics. An equal number of male and female athletes are set to compete for the first time: 5,250 men and 5,250 women.

Breaking will make its full Olympic debut this year, with solo breakers improvising to the DJ's tracks, pulling moves such as windmills, the six step and freezes. It was introduced at the 2018 Youth Olympics and "due to the combination of athleticism and urban dance, it has secured a spot on the programme" for Paris, said the BBC.

How can I watch?

The BBC will broadcast the action on its television channels, BBC iPlayer, the BBC Sport website and there will also be extensive coverage on BBC Radio 5 Live. If you want to attend events, tickets are on sale on the Paris 2024 website. The cost ranges from around €24 (£21) to €2,400 (£2,100).

The lighting of the Olympic torch today comes amid a "dampening" of enthusiasm for the Paris Games in an increasingly "fractious" France, commentators warn.

"We're ready for this final straight," said Paris Olympics chief organiser Tony Estanguet at a press conference to mark the 100-day countdown. But the French capital's "often hard-to-please residents appear in no mood for a party yet", said France 24.

'Security threats' and 'faecal' pollution

With the clock ticking down until the Games kick off on 26 July, France's "bitter politics and gloomy mindset are dampening the mood" among a "fractious" public, said The Japan Times. The build-up has been "marred by rows" that go to "the heart of a bitter national debate about identity and race". 

Herve Le Bras, a sociologist, told the paper that the Games threaten to "underline the major fractures in France – notably the fracture between Paris and the rest of the country".

An Odoxa poll of more than 1,200 Paris region residents last November found that 44% thought the Games were a "bad thing", and that 52% were planning to leave the city during the 16-day event. One Parisian told the BBC that staying would be "unbearable", with the Games making it "impossible to park, impossible to move around, impossible to do anything".

Security fears are also growing amid mounting global tensions. In a break from the tradition of opening the Games in the main stadium, the organisers have devised a "grandiose" ceremony centred around a parade of barges on the River Seine, said Le Monde. The original plan was for as many as 600,000 spectators to watch from the riverbanks, but security and logistical concerns have led the government to "progressively scale back" the plan, with the spectator numbers reduced to 300,000.

And President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday that the ceremony might be moved to a new location if the authorities decide that the risk of an attack, potentially by drones, is too great. "There are Plan Bs and Plan Cs", including holding the opening at the city's Stade de France, he told television interviewers. Asked if the Kremlin would seek to disrupt the Olympics, Macron said that he had "no doubt".

Another potential threat is sewage pollution in the Seine, where swimming events are due to take place. In an analysis by the Surfrider Foundation, only one out of 14 water samples from the river were found to be safe for swimming. Bacteria, including "pollution of faecal origin", remains dangerously high in the river, said the non-profit environmental organisation, and it is "clear" that athletes would be "swimming in polluted water and taking significant risks to their health".

Games boss Estanguet said last week that if water quality levels worsen, "there could be a final decision where we could not swim".

'Mountains of scepticism'

 The Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee has "mountains of scepticism to dispel" in France and beyond, said The Associated Press. The $13 billion cost of the 2021 Tokyo Games and the "unfulfilled promises of beneficial change" for 2016 host Rio de Janeiro triggered widespread anger, and the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi were "tarnished by Russian doping".

But some previous predictions of Olympics doom have proved incorrect. In the run-up to the London 2012 Games, the Army was drafted in to bolster the security presence provided by private firm G4S, amid fears of a repeat of the riots that had broken out in the city in 2011.

Journalists emit "cyclical loud buzzing noises before every set of Summer Games", said George Vecsey in The New York Times in 2004. Reporters will "continue to fret on schedule", because it's "in our job description".

Estanguet acknowledged last week that "before this kind of big event, there are always many questions, many concerns". But the Paris edition would make his nation "proud", he said. 

The 15 April 1874 has a good claim to be the founding moment of modern art. A group of 31 artists, who'd often been rejected by the official Paris Salon, had decided to stage their own show at 35 Boulevard des Capucines, a photographers' studio. They included Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, all of whom were regarded as part of the "avant-garde" (a military term that had only recently acquired its modern meaning). The show had some 3,500 paying visitors (400,000 visited the Salon) and it made a loss. Most of the reviews were negative. But it launched impressionism as a movement.

How did it get the name "impressionism"?

The word wasn't coined by the artists (they billed themselves as the "Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers, etc"). It was originally a term of abuse. The journalist Louis Leroy wrote a review in Le Charivari – a 19th century French equivalent of Private Eye – mocking the exhibition. "An impression indeed!" he wrote of Monet's Impression, Sunrise (1872). "Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape." By the established standards of the day, Monet's painting of the Le Havre docks at sunrise was less a painting than an oil sketch. Leroy's sneering label, though, captured the snapshot-like quality of impressionist works – the emphasis on the way light and colour hit the eye. These seemed shocking to critics at the time: Le Figaro called the show "a frightful spectacle of human vanity straying into dementia".

Why was the art felt to be so novel and shocking?

For most of the 19th century, the French art world was dominated by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, a national institution that saw painting as a science, and promoted a rigid hierarchy of techniques and genres. Precise perspective, careful drawing, theatrical lighting effects, smoothly mixed colours and invisible brushwork were the hallmarks of what's now known, disparagingly, as "academic art". Large-scale depictions of scenes from history and classical literature were seen as the highest form of painting. Landscapes, still lifes and scenes from everyday life – the impressionists' specialities – ranked much lower. As a result, their work struck critics as flouting the rules on every front. Their seemingly unfinished daubs, with lowstatus subject matter, added up to "a war on beauty", one wrote.

Did the critics matter?

Critical standards did: the Académie's jurors dictated who gained entry to the annual Salon, which could make or break careers. "In Paris there are scarcely 15 art lovers capable of liking a painter who doesn't show at the Salon," Renoir complained – and that greatly affected sales. But the old system was creaking. Complaints about their conservative tastes had been mounting; the jurors also exercised political censorship, especially during the reign of Napoleon III (1852- 1870). There had been protests in 1863 when the Salon rejected two-thirds of the works submitted, including paintings by Édouard Manet and Pissarro. Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) was the centrepiece of a "Salon des Refusés" that year. Manet later became the elder statesman of the impressionists.

Did impressionism change the rules?

Not in the short term. Even when the impressionists' paintings began to sell, the Académie's values still affected prices. In the 1870s, you could buy a landscape by Cézanne for a fraction of the price of a ballet dancer by Degas, because paintings of figures came higher in the official hierarchy. It took another 20 years for the impressionists' prices to reach the level of Académieapproved art. By then, though, opinion was turning decisively in their favour. Their optimistic, light-filled paintings were popular; there were seven subsequent shows. "The public is cheerful, people have a good time with us," the painter Gustave Caillebotte reported during the successful fourth impressionist exhibition in 1879. They were promoted by influential admirers, such as the novelist Émile Zola, a schoolfriend of Cézanne's. Monet and Renoir became rich, famous and respected all over Europe.

What made the impressionists "modern"?

They answered the poet Charles Baudelaire's call for an "art of modern life". They painted images of the modern city, middleclass pastimes and industrial landscapes. Academic painting emphasised idealisation and polish; the impressionists valued freedom of technique, a personal rather than a conventional approach to subject matter, and the truthful reproduction of nature. Impressionism also depended on modern technologies: its signature move – painting outdoors, in natural light, instead of in a studio – was possible thanks to the invention, mid-century, of premixed paint in portable tubes. And it was, in part, a reaction to photography. Illustrative, realistic painting, as promoted by the Académie, couldn't compete with photos. Paintings concerned with subjective perception could.

What is their legacy?

By the mid-1880s, the impressionists began to dissolve, as several of the group went in different directions. Impressionism provided a technical starting point for many successive modern art movements – starting, obviously, with the postimpressionism of Degas, Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, but spreading further afield. When Wassily Kandinsky saw a Monet haystack for the first time in Moscow in the 1890s, he began to conceive of abstraction: "objects were discredited as an essential element", he noted with excitement. Many US abstract expressionists acknowledged their impressionist precursors. This legacy is being celebrated in France this year with a blockbuster exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay, and with events in Normandy, Bordeaux and elsewhere.

Every time is the right time to drink Champagne. But if you must have an excuse, Valentine's Day — alone or paired up — is a fine reason. From a chic Parisian bar to a parlor in New York City, these seven Champagne-focused bars are superb locations to feel fizzy.

Le Bar at Hotel Plaza Athenee in Paris 

A great hotel bar is special. You can people-watch and listen in on conversations, all while enjoying a good drink. At the swanky Le Bar, grab a seat at the transparent bar (it is made from a single piece of resin), and sip your bubbly while smack in the center of the action. The menu has several pages devoted to Champagne, including dozens of brut and rosé options from Dom Perignon.

Be Bubbly in Napa Valley

Be Bubbly has quickly made a name for itself in Napa Valley. This vivacious space, lit by chandeliers and neon signs, is the place to go for a glass of Champagne, bottle of rosé or a fizzy flight. It is the first dedicated Champagne bar in Napa, and the friendly, knowledgeable staff is there to answer questions, share suggestions and keep those flutes filled. Order the Regis Ova Caviar Bites, a Be Bubbly specialty of creme fraiche toasts topped with dill, kettle chips and, of course, caviar. 

Balthazar in Copenhagen

Balthazar — named in honor of the gargantuan 12-liter wine bottle — is Denmark's first Champagne bar. Connected to the Hotel d'Angleterre, you will want to stay a while, settling into one of the high-backed chairs or taking a stool at the long bar. Balthazar offers Champagne from more than 42 different houses, including Gosset, founded in 1584 and the oldest house in Champagne. 

Champagne and Gyoza Bar in Tokyo

You get the best of both worlds at the Champagne and Gyoza Bar. Its mission is to "make people happy with Champagne and delicious cuisine," and they do this with their straightforward approach to both. A glass of effervescent Champagne is a delightful accompaniment to the rich, crackling-skinned gyoza, which come with several sauces for dipping. 

Air's Champagne Parlor in New York City

At this cozy Art-Deco inspired spot in Greenwich Village, guests can get a crash course in all things Champagne. The team behind Air's Champagne Parlor aims to make the drink more accessible, and their wine book isn't only a menu. It also answers common questions about Champagne, like what is a blend and the difference between vintage and non-vintage Champagnes. There is an eclectic food menu offered as well, in which oysters and caviar are listed alongside popcorn and pigs in a blanket.  

Culture Wine Bar in Cape Town

Culture Wine Bar brings the (wine) world to Cape Town. The impressive wine list features "cult classics" and "hidden gems" from around the globe, as well as more than 20 Champagne options and over a dozen methode Cap Classique sparkling wines made in South Africa. The space is warm and inviting, with brick walls and comfortable booths, and there is often live music.

Pop Alleigh in Atlanta

Anything (Champagne-related) is possible at Pop Alleigh. This cute Champagne bar — the first to open in Atlanta — offers Champagne by the glass or bottle, with dozens of vintage and non-vintage selections. They also have multiple flight options, for those who cannot decide or want a taste of many wines. Go all out and try the King of Hearts, featuring Nomine-Renard "Special Club" 2013, Dom Perignon Brut 2013 and Krug Grande Cuvee 169th edition.

Christmas work parties give millions of people sleepless nights, said the Daily Star. One in four of us "lies awake worrying over what we did or fear we're about to do" at the annual office bash, said the tabloid. A separate study, by Premier Inn, found that nearly three-quarters of workers believed office parties were a "hotspot" for gaffes such as insulting the boss, throwing up and inappropriate smooching.

'Clanking cowbells' clash in Swiss village

Villagers in Switzerland have launched a campaign to maintain the tradition of "clanking cowbells" after two couples complained about the noise at night, said The Times. The newcomers had asked authorities earlier this year to make a farmer remove the bells from his herd of 15 cows while they grazed overnight on a field next to a residential area, but a third of voters in the village of Aarwangen "rose up" to demand a local vote to protect the traditional use of bells.

Ring mystery solved at Ritz

A guest at the Ritz in Paris who thought hotel staff had stolen a £637,000 diamond ring will be reunited with her jewellery after it was found in a vacuum cleaner, said Sky News. A Malaysian guest had filed a police complaint on Friday, but the ring was found on Sunday. "Thanks to meticulous searches by security agents at the Ritz Paris, the ring was found this morning in a vacuum cleaner bag," said the hotel in a statement, adding that "our client is happy at the news".

The mystery of a €750,000 (£640,000) diamond ring believed to have been stolen from the Ritz Paris has been solved, after it was found in a vacuum cleaner bag.

Its owner, a Malaysian businesswoman who had been staying at the exclusive hotel, filed a police complaint on Friday, saying she discovered the ring was missing after returning from a shopping trip.

A day after she raised the alarm the hotel said it was still exploring all leads, including the possibility of burglary. Police "scoured the hotel and prosecutors stood ready to take the case on if the disappearance had turned out to be the result of a theft", said The Standard.

But in a statement released on Sunday, the hotel said that "thanks to meticulous searches by security agents" the ring had been "found this morning in a vacuum cleaner bag".

The Ritz offered three more nights to the guest to make up for any inconvenience, reported Le Parisien.

While the outcome was "less exciting than many of the theories that had circulated online", said The Guardian, "it would not have been the first time that the celebrated hotel in Place Vendôme had been hit".

An unnamed member of the Saudi royal family reported the theft of jewellery worth about €800,000 from her suite in 2018, and only a few months earlier five armed men made off with jewels worth more than €4 million from display windows inside the hotel.

In fact, jewellery thefts in Paris are far from "unusual", said People. In 2016, Kim Kardashian was held up at gunpoint while she stayed at the nearby Hôtel de Pourtalès. Among the items taken were the reality star's emerald-cut 20-carat diamond engagement ring, "which has never been recovered".

How many SUVs is too many?

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo is putting that question to citizens in February, said The Associated Press, "the latest salvo in her long-running campaign to make the city more friendly to pedestrians and the planet, and less friendly to cars". 

Voters will be asked whether to impose a "very significant" increase in parking fees for SUVs visiting the city. SUVs are "dangerous, cumbersome and use too many resources to manufacture", Paris's deputy mayor for public space and mobility policy said. 

The European Transport Safety Council called for a ban on SUVs in populated areas after a Land Rover crashed through a London school fence in July, after which two children died. "Do people need two-and-a-half-tonne vehicles to take their children to school?" asked a spokesperson.

'Safe space in a harsh world'

The popularity of SUVs has risen sharply in recent years, going from a 7% share of the EU car market in 2008 to 36% in 2018, according to a report by Transport and Environment. This has "significant consequences for the demand for key metals and road safety", Ralph Palmer, from Transport and Environment, told the i news site. 

Totalling around 330 million worldwide, SUVs now make up almost half of global car sales, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), despite other car sales falling.

While there is no exact definition of what constitutes an SUV (short for sports utility vehicle), they are much bigger than standard cars – but their "defining characteristic" is that "they all make a nod towards off-road capability, even if most don't have it", Andrew Antony said in The Observer. 

That is "the cardinal conceit of SUVs". Although "the overwhelming majority" are found in cities, they "trade on a familiarity with safaris and game shooting". But the marketing message for women, by contrast, is one of "security and protection", said Antony, "offering a safe space in a harsh world". 

SUVs aren't necessarily the problem, said i news. It's fair to distinguish "gargantuan cars" like some Land Rovers from "smaller, lighter, more efficient SUVs built for families with no mud-plugging pretentions". The term SUV applies to the 2.6-tonne Rolls-Royce Cullinan as much as it does to a small estate car. 

The spread of SUVs "presents a delicate social conundrum" – how to balance personal freedom with "everyone else's freedom from harm".

'Unique danger on our cities' roads'

SUVs represent "a unique danger on our cities' roads", said Laura Laker in The Guardian. While drivers are involved in fewer collisions overall, when they do crash into children the collisions are "eight times more likely to be fatal" than those involving passenger cars, according to research published in the Journal of Safety Research last year. 

SUVs also produce almost 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year globally, said the IEA. They are about a quarter less fuel efficient than a standard car.

Although these "hulking vehicles" were designed for off-road driving, in the UK three-quarters of these "end up polluting city streets", mostly in the affluent west London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Laker said.

"The horse may have bolted on SUV ownership, but we do have tools at our disposal to discourage people from driving these dangerous vehicles. Now is the time to put our foot down."

Pizza Hut is selling snake pizza in Hong Kong, reported CNN. The new pizza combines shredded snake meat, black mushrooms and Chinese dried ham, key ingredients of the centuries-old dish of snake stew. “Paired with cheese and diced chicken, the snake meat becomes richer in taste,” said Pizza Hut Hong Kong. A "rich culinary culture based on snakes" is common across several parts of Southeast Asia, said CNN, including Vietnam and Thailand, where snakes are usually farmed for consumption.

Carrots give woman 'dodgy tan'

A woman "scoffed so many carrots" she developed an "Oompa Loompa orange glow", said the Daily Star. Dena Rendall was taken aback when friends began noticing a flush to her skin. Initially they thought it was a "dodgy fake tan" but she actually had carotenemia, a yellow-orange skin pigmentation caused by high carotene levels in the blood. Eating as many as 10 carrots, three peppers and a sweet potato every day to improve her health did the trick. "It's definitely healthier than sunbeds," said the 21-year-old.

Painting in kitchen goes for millions

A painting found in the kitchen of a homeowner who had planned to chuck it away will be kept in the Louvre after being declared a national treasure. The 13th-century piece, Christ Mocked, by Cimabue, was sold at auction for €24m in 2019, a matter of months after it had been discovered hanging over a stove during a house clearance in provincial France. Its sale made the French woman a millionaire, but she died just two days later, noted Artnet.

Paris is set to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, welcoming the world's nations for the quadrennial sporting competition. Before that, though, France's capital city will have to deal with some less-wanted guests: bedbugs. 

The pests have been infesting the city for weeks, and they're not confined to their namesake beds, either. Videos have been circulating on social media claiming to show bedbugs taking over Paris trains, subways, buses, movie theaters and even at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport.

With nine months to go until the start of the Summer Olympics, questions remain as to whether the plague of insects can be controlled before the Olympians arrive — or even if the plague is real. For now, though, it appears that residents of Paris are having trouble not letting the bedbugs bite.

Why are bedbugs invading Paris?

A lot of it has to do with an increase in global trade and, especially in Paris, tourism. "Every late summer we see a big increase in bedbugs," entomologist Jean-Michel Berenger told BBC. "People have been moving about over July and August, and they bring them back in their luggage. And each year, the seasonal increase is bigger than the last one."

Bedbugs used to be easier to control in the 1940s and 1950s, thanks to the widespread use of the insecticide DDT. However, DDT has been banned in the decades since due to its harmful health effects on humans. Modern bedbugs are the descendants of "those that survived the DDT blitz," BBC noted. So unfortunately, today's bedbug population is "far more resistant." 

In Paris, videos posted on TikTok and other social media platforms purported to show bedbugs crawling on subway and train seats. Another post on X, formerly Twitter, showed a woman covered in what she said were bedbug bites obtained when visiting a Paris movie theater. These increased sightings, and the resulting panic, come months after a study by French health agency ANSES found that 11% of French households were "infested by bedbugs" between 2017 and 2022.

The ANSES study concluded that bedbugs were a psychological strain and "financial burden" on the French, with households spending 230 million euros ($241 million) a year to fight bedbugs and 83 million euros ($87.7 million) treating bedbug-related health problems.

Concerns have inevitably turned to what could happen if the bedbugs linger for the Summer Olympics. In the meantime, "Paris companies specializing in treating insect infestations say they've been overwhelmed in recent weeks." CBS News reported.

What is being done?

City officials have sounded the alarm, and French President Emmanuel Macron's government has gotten involved. Paris Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire urged French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on X and in a letter to bring "all stakeholders" to the table and "put an action plan in place against this scourge" as France prepares to welcome the Olympic Games.

The French government has said it will take steps to eliminate the infestation and "reassure and protect" the public, CNN reported. It is assembling pest control experts to come up with bedbug-fighting best practices, some of which are already on an anti-bedbug site the French government set up three years ago.

After raising the alarm, Grégoire warned against "hysteria" related to the pests. "There is no threat to the Olympic Games," he said. "Bedbugs existed before and they will exist afterward."

Is the bedbug panic overblown?

Bedbugs are making a comeback  — "and have been for perhaps 20 or 30 years," not just in Paris but everywhere in the world, BBC said. The pests are a problem in Paris but so is "the general psychosis which has taken hold," said Berenger, the French bedbug expert. "A lot of the problem is being exaggerated."

"The question of whether France is in the grip of a bedbug outbreak or simply grappling with normal levels of pestilence has become a political Rorschach test," The Wall Street Journal explained, with opposition lawmakers feeding the panic and Macron's government pointing out that there's more rumor than fact.

French Transport Minister Clément Beaune said Wednesday, after a meeting with public transportation providers, that no bedbugs had been found in the subway or on trains after dozens of sightings were investigated. "The response to a serious problem should not be a counterproductive caricature," he said. "We must take every case seriously, not fall into psychosis."

Paris has bid adieu to rented electric scooters, becoming the first European capital to ban the “free-floating” vehicles from its streets five years after it was the first to introduce them.

The last of the French capital’s 15,000 trottinettes were loaded into vans on Thursday afternoon and a ban came into effect on Friday 1 September.

While many of the e-scooters will find new homes in other European cities, their removal from Paris streets signifies the “end of an era” and concludes the city’s “five-year rental e-scooter experiment”, said The Guardian.

They became hugely popular among the Parisian youth as an easy, affordable and eco-friendly mode of transport. The scooters could be conveniently accessed via a mobile app and left anywhere in Paris. But despite their popularity with younger Parisians, their presence on the city’s streets has been marred by controversy.

Their use has led to hundreds of accidents on Paris roads, several of them fatal. In 2019, the then transport minister, now prime minister, Elisabeth Borne complained in Le Parisien that the city was becoming beholden to the “law of the jungle”, as unscrupulous e-scooter users zipped through traffic, rode on the pavements and dumped discarded scooters in doorways, walkways and busy public thoroughfares.

Paris introduced strict regulations on the use of scooters the same year. Then, in April of this year, the issue was put to a referendum, with a seemingly “emphatic” outcome, said CNBC: 90% of those who took part voted to ban them.

Paris “got it right” when it voted to ban the rentals, said Jill Filipovic for CNN, and “more cities should follow suit”. Often “more of a menace than a convenience”, the use of e-scooters in major cities is frequently under-regulated, and enforcement of existing rules is “spotty” at best.

For example, multiple riders on a single scooter and scooters on pavements were technically banned, yet it was not unusual “to see snuggling couples on a single scooter, flying down a city sidewalk”. It is often suggested, too, that e-scooters make cities “greener” – but there is little evidence that e-scooter riders would be driving cars or using taxis if they hadn’t opted to rent their electric vehicles.

But the referendum wasn’t as emphatic as it first appeared. As operators quickly pointed out, the turnout represented just 7% of those eligible to vote. Indeed, what really happened was “obvious, and predictable”, said Hugh Schofield, reporting for the BBC in Paris. “Older people – who vote regularly and hate e-scooters – turned out in force. Many younger people, who actually use the things, are more likely to have stayed at home.”

The impulse to ban e-scooters is an “understandable one”, said European affairs correspondent Lee Hockstader in The Washington Post, but “something important will be lost when the city’s rental scooters are gone”.

Indeed, older Parisians “in trying to protect a glorious old place they love, along with themselves, might be doing more harm than they realize”. In taking away the scooters, they are “putting the squeeze on the very thing that gives any city its juice and spirit of reinvention: young people, in all their rowdy, racing recklessness”.

A man was arrested in Paris after jumping off the Eiffel Tower with a parachute and landing nearby. The experienced climber entered the tower’s perimeter before the opening time on Thursday. Although he was spotted, he managed to get to the top before anybody could stop him, carrying the parachute in a backpack. Attempts to stop him were unsuccessful and he went ahead with his jump, landing on the roof of a nearby sports centre before being arrested by police, said CNN.

Publisher twists Peterson review

There has been criticism of the use of an “extremely selective quote” on the cover of “oddball guru” Jordan Peterson’s book, said The Times. The paper’s reviewer, James Marriott, said “Beyond Order” was “bloated and dead” with prose that was “repetitious, unvariegated, rhythmless, opaque and possessed of a suffocating sense of its own importance”. But the cover of the book features Marriott as saying the book was “the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has ever written”. The paper said publishers can “take the base metal of a stinking book review and turn it into the gold of praise”.

Bonnie Prince Charlie’s face revealed

Scientists say they have created the “most lifelike” reconstruction of the face of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Following his death in 1788, a cast of the prince’s face was taken, and now a team at the University of Dundee’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification used death masks to recreate the Scottish prince’s features. The development offers historians a “first glimpse of how the pimpled prince looked”, said the Daily Mail.

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They may look like something straight out of a science-fiction film, but flying taxis could soon be a common sight in the skies over cities around the world.

Companies hoping to make flying vehicles have “had a tough two years”, admitted The Observer, with the sector “one of the most notable examples of the pandemic-era financial bubble… as investors sought an aerial Tesla, capable of flying passengers with zero carbon emissions for the first time”.

But now a series of prototypes being granted regulatory approval means flying cars are one step closer to lift off.

‘Quieter, cheaper and emission-free aircraft’

Technically known as eVTOL aircraft, standing for “electric vertical take-off and landing”, dozens of companies around the world have been in a race to develop a “quieter, cheaper and emission-free aircraft, that can land right in the heart of cities”, said the BBC’s technology of business editor Ben Morris.

Designs range from quadcopter drones – similar to those used for filming – scaled up to fit two people, to the likes of Boeing’s Wisk, which combines wings with different combinations of propellers that produce their own lift, cutting energy usage and allowing for ranges over 60 miles.

These differences are “in part a reflection of different hopes for what eVTOLs will actually be for”, said The Observer. Most companies hope to replace helicopters, which are loud, expensive and polluting, while longer-range versions could provide a market for city-to-city travel.

One common trait all these have is that they are designed to be cheap and easy enough to use to eventually rival road taxis. The electric-powered vehicles are also being touted as a green solution to urban transport.

‘Power, not ambition, could be the issue’

In June, the US Federal Aviation Administration gave California-based Joby Aviation the green light to start flight testing its new production prototype. The company has been building and flying pre-production prototypes since 2017, “but this time around is significant,” said NPR, “because it is the first of its factory-built vehicles to be approved for test flights”.

Joby aims to begin commercial passenger operations in the US in 2025, Bloomberg reported, and has partnered with Delta Air Lines to deliver a “transformational, sustainable home-to-airport transportation service” for fliers, set to roll out first in New York and Los Angeles. Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt told The Washington Post in 2021 the company hopes to begin services at an average price of around $3 per mile – comparable to a taxi or Uber – and eventually move to below $1 per mile.

But Joby and other companies face three main challenges beyond achieving lift-off. Amid fierce competition from established aviation and automobile giants as well as new upstart firms, companies will need to show there is a market for flying vehicles.

Key to this will be securing flight paths and landing spots right in the heart of some of the world’s most populous cities.

But batteries “remain the biggest problem”, said the BBC. “They remain heavy and expensive, which curtails the range and limits the cost advantages of EVTOL aircraft, over helicopters, trains and cars.”

Power, not ambition, could end up being the deciding factor in whether flying vehicles really take off.

A record number of on-the-spot fines were issued by councils for “seemingly bizarre” offences including feeding birds, picking up stones and napping in public, said The Guardian. The fines for what have been dubbed as “busybody offences”, has seen the total numbers of fines increase to 13,433 in 2022, up from 10,412 in 2019. Shouting in public has been banned by four councils, as well as making noise, which has been banned by four councils.

Woman receives postcard sent in 1969

A woman in the US was surprised to receive a postcard that turned out to have been sent from Paris, France, in 1969. “At first I thought it must have been meant for one of my neighbours,” she told Bangor Daily News, “but then I realised it was addressed to the original owners of my house”. The postcard, sent by someone called Roy, began: “Dear folks, by the time you get this I will have long since been home.”

Bath residents ‘baffled’ by parking lines

Locals in Bath are “baffled” by new parking lines, including a small curved space around a corner, said The Telegraph. Residents in Denmark Road said they cannot fit a car inside the lines. To add to the confusion, parking spots cover the entrances to driveways with people fearing they will block neighbours into their homes and white “H bars” telling people not to park painted within parking bays. A local councillor said planners had to contend with some very narrow residential roads.

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Each time I try to write a word about Alain Ducasse chocolate, I look to the box beside me. In itself, a work of simple art: crisp-edged cardboard that folds out of itself with ASMR-levels of soft swish and glide that sigh laser-cut satisfaction.

Beneath, the branded sticker holds together leaves of filmy black paper that unfold to reveal rows upon rows of ganaches, pralinés and nougatines. Each one has been painstakingly patterned or sprinkled to denote its individual interior.

Whenever I try to type, my hand instead reaches for one of these enrobed little rascals. No sooner have tongue and teeth begun than my eyes roll, rapture sets in and all words fly fully from my mind. Writing about Alain Ducasse chocolate has proven difficult. Researching it has not.

La Manufacture

These life-changingly good chocolates began life in France, much like the man himself. Ducasse is the second-most Michelin-awarded chef on the planet. Heading up a bevy of acclaimed restaurants and cafés across the globe, he’s also responsible for training multiple generations of extraordinarily talented chefs. To tally the awards that have waterfalled from his wisdom would be a full-time job in itself. So it’s little surprise that when Ducasse sets out to do something, he does it seriously well.

Step up La Manufacture – the Ducasse brand that began ten years ago in 2013 with Le Chocolat. Ducasse claims a life-long love of chocolate – a confection he justly describes as “terribly sensual and bewitching” – as well as a dedication to meticulous, rigorous product sourcing. In trying to find a chocolate provider to meet his standards, Ducasse concluded he needed to produce his own.

“We are the only chocolatiers to make 100% of the chocolate we use,” said Francois-Xavier Germain, the general manager of Les Manufactures Alain Ducasse. “Even other bean-to-bar companies sometimes buy in chocolate – we control the experience end to end. Making our own blend enables us to adjust a recipe and control perfectly the experience and taste of chocolate. It’s in our hands.”

Le Chocolat

In 2013 Le Chocolat opened in Paris near Place de la Bastille, and has kept its sustainable bean-to-bar philosophy to this day. The workshop looks far from Wonka-esque; it’s a sleek brick and iron-lined space that exudes warmth and wafts a rich wallop of cocoa out onto Rue de la Roquette. The set-up, headed by chocolatier Quentin Francis-Gaigneux, is run with extraordinary efficiency; in part because it’s Ducasse and you’d expect nothing less, but also because the place is tiny.

Old-fashioned bean sorters, second-hand milling machines and recycled furniture lead you from the first sack of unsorted cocoa to troughs of satiny chocolate. Le Chocolat may not look Dahl-ian, but there’s a definite magic about it as you walk through the entire process, dipping digits into each passing pool and pile of chocolate. Controlling every step means Francis-Gaigneux (and by extension Ducasse) can innovate and explore the ingredients however they like.

When Francis-Gaigneux hands me a spoon of freshly made almond praliné, I have to stifle a groan it’s so good. A buttery hit of toasted caramel and roasted almond that makes every other praliné I’ve tasted seem like a tawdry pretenders to the throne. We try making our own bars, littered with caramelised pistachios, hazelnuts and almonds – more make it to my mouth than the block, but I can only muster Piaf-levels of regret.

L’histoire

The only downside is that Le Chocolat proved too successful. Despite having shops in France, Japan and recently London’s Borough Market and Coal Drops Yard, Ducasse needed to expand production. The new Paris manufacturing site – a far more up-to-date operation of silver machines in a clean white warehouse – retains all the experience and diligence of the original but with a few more mod-cons.

“It was very important to Mr Ducasse that our chocolate still be produced inside Paris,” said Germain. “The city has a long tradition of industry inside its walls, for centuries, and we are a French manufacturer. Producing inside Paris is something very important to us – to recreate this tradition of artisanal production.”

Though La Manufacture is relatively new, Parisian history is at the heart of what the team and Ducasse are hoping to achieve. Headed up by Adonis Bioud, the site at Place de la Nation opens in September, but is already firmly part of the family.

“The sister at Rue de la Roquette, and now at Place de la Nation, are two historical places in Paris,” said Germain. “We have the story of the neighbourhood, of where we are, how we do cocoa. Everything is connected!” He explained, winding his speech to the most French conclusion possible: “It’s like the correspondence of Baudelaire, non? Between the senses.”

Le Café and La Glace

Thankfully I don’t have time to unravel unexpected French philosophy: there’s far better things to fill my head with. While La Manufacture began with chocolate, the ever-busy, ever-entrepreneurial Ducasse wasn’t finished. His next venture in 2019 turned to coffee, a natural bean-to-bean metamorphosis.

Le Café Alain Ducasse is run by two-time coffee roasting champion Veda Viraswami and a team as dedicated to caffeine as Le Chocolat is to cocoa. Though Le Café is just as serenely svelte, the young team have much more of a mad-scientist manner to them. Here you can try coffee made to seem like whiskey, another to be like a beer (served in pints), and tea coffee too. The tea coffee – a revolutionary drink made with the usually discarded outer part of the bean – is sensational, a hybrid of both drinks’ best bits.

The Ducasse manufacture machine kept moving. In 2021 came La Glace, an ice cream and sorbet shop born from his meeting with Bolognese gelato master Matteo Casone. Nothing at Casone’s tangerine-coloured counter is “normal”, naturally. Even the seemingly traditional flavours have been stratosphered to new, supreme levels – the vanilla contains three different continental origins of the orchid pod. The mix of sorbets, granitas and ice creams can be paired by Casone’s team, making the most of dual flavours. The standout, above and beyond, is the most suspicious-sounding – a sensationally tart five herb sorbet that has me daily considering popping to Paris for just one more spoonful.

Le Biscuit

In 2022, the newest (and so far final) addition to La Manufacture was born. Le Biscuit brings the humble and remarkably overlooked biscuit into the gourmet world. They’ve been overhauled at the hands of pastry chef Flora Davies, who presents an array of types to try: biscuit and cookie bars, slim “hexas” hexagons and sandwich-style palets. The crowning glory, however, is the freshly-topped biscuits that are garnished on-demand with toppings and trappings that are as over-the-top as they are superb. The lemon is the easy highlight; a candied-lemon biscuit topped with lemon marmalade, lemon paste, slices of candied lemon and grated zest. It tastes like Sicilian summer.

At Le Biscuit, it feels like Ducasse had fun; he’s reimagined his wife’s favourite shortbreads and baked things to tempt his childrens’ friends with. The results are far from homely though; the biscuits are baked with the finest of Breton butters, Japan-inspired buckwheat, smoked vanilla and linden honey. Of course the coffee and chocolate come from the sister shops, the four heads regularly wandering into each other’s domains to beg, borrow and brainstorm the next madcap mouthful.

The entire enterprise is, as the world has come to expect from Ducasse, remarkable. Having set out to make the best, he’s done it repeatedly by bringing together and trusting other experts in each field – arguably Ducasse’s greatest talent. So what comes next for La Manufacture? It’s hard to predict, hard not to wishfully imagine, but such musings are best left to others and the man himself. The chocolate box beside me has been left in peace for too long. Bon appetit…

Jo Davey was a guest of Le Chocolat Alain Ducasse; lechocolat-alainducasse.com

A short stroll from the dizzying heights of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica is Hôtel Rochechouart, an unassuming Art Deco gem that’s not to be missed for those new to Paris or long-time visitors. Set in the hip and happening Pigalle district (often referred to as SoPi by residents) and close to the bustling Rue des Martyrs and the Moulin Rouge, the hotel is ideally located, allowing you to get lost in the beautiful alleys of vibrant Montmartre before dipping into this hotspot on the famous Boulevard de Rochechouart.

Hôtel Rochechouart first opened as The Charleston in 1929, and it conceals a rich and illustrious history, with a whole host of famous intellectual and creative names said to have waltzed through its doors, among them Édith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker. Fast forward to October 2020, when it reopened, having been brought back to life by the French-based Orso Hotels group and Festen interior design – a minimalist, Paris-based design studio.

The interiors

We popped in for lunch on a quiet Tuesday afternoon and happily had the place almost to ourselves, save for a few well-heeled Parisians. Stepping past the hotel’s beautiful crimson and gold façade has a touch of understated glamour about it; a bit like stepping into a jazz-age time capsule. The designers took inspiration from the hotel itself, trying to recreate the ambience of 1930s Paris by restoring the authentic details of the historic building. The façade was stripped away to reveal the original design, and the mosaic floor and wrought iron lift have been lovingly restored.

The hotel’s sensitive makeover manages to both evoke the La Belle Époque while still feeling modern and fresh. It is chic and understated, with ceiling fans, big mirrors on the wall, art deco vases and pretty vases of dried flowers on each table.

The food

The food – just like the interior – is quintessentially Parisienne without falling into worn cliché territory. The lunch menu is pleasingly simple; nothing pretentious or show-offy about it. It doesn’t need to be. The hotel prides itself on classic, traditional, seasonal dishes and doesn’t disappoint – it is simple and sophisticated, bistro and bourgeois, all at the same time.

We opt for poached eggs and mushrooms velouté and paté en croûte for our starters, followed by veal liver, venetian style, with sweet onions and fresh herbs, and steak tartare with homemade french fries. We wash it down with a dangerously smooth Côtes du Rhône. And just like that, an afternoon in Paris happily disappears.

We finish with crème brûlée – which was served to us in quite ordinary little glass pots, another sign of this restaurant’s confidence in its cooking, which does all the talking. They are creamy flawless perfection. Meanwhile, staff are attentive and friendly, and the atmosphere is relaxed, with lazy Motown tunes wafting overhead.

The hotel also boasts a rooftop bar open late for cocktails with tremendous views over Paris, plus a newly-opened oyster bar and legendary nightclub Le Mikado. This is not one to be missed.

Felicity Capon was a guest of Restaurant Rochechouart. Hôtel Rochechouart, 55 Boulevard de Rochechouart 75009, Paris, France; restaurantrochechouart.com

Air France and Airbus face charges of involuntary manslaughter in a landmark trial over the 2009 plane crash that killed 228 passengers and crew.

Air France flight AF447 disappeared from radars in pitch darkness during an equatorial storm en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The Airbus A330 vanished without a mayday signal and debris was found days later in the Atlantic Ocean near the equator. It remains the worst crash in Air France’s history.

However, it took another two years and an unprecedented search effort covering 17,000 square kilometres of ocean bed at depths of up to 4,000 metres to locate the bulk of the fuselage and recover the black box flight recorder.

The subsequent investigation found that as the plane entered a so-called “intertropical convergence zone” that often produces volatile storms with heavy rain, “ice crystals present at high altitudes had disabled the plane’s airspeed sensors, blocking speed and altitude information”, said The Guardian. The automatic pilot functions also stopped working as the jet went into an “aerodynamic stall” and then plunged into the ocean.

A report by France’s BEA accident agency concluded the pilots had become disorientated by a temporary loss of data from iced-up sensors and failed to take appropriate action when the plane went into a stall.

“The captain was on a break when problems began,” said the BBC, “and investigators concluded that the co-pilots did not have the training to deal with malfunctioning equipment.”

BEA also uncovered earlier discussions between Air France and Airbus about the reliability of the defective speed monitoring sensor, “which was quickly replaced on planes worldwide in the months after the accident”, reported Euronews.

How did the crash change the aviation industry?

“Planes most often crash on land and the AF447 ocean crash came to be seen as one of a handful of accidents that changed aviation” said The Guardian. It led to changes in safety regulations, pilot training and the use of airspeed sensors.

The crash “sparked a broad rethink about training and technology”, said Reuters, but over a decade after the BEA’s initial findings were made public “there are no signs of another of its longstanding concerns being addressed”.

The news agency said the upcoming trial, which began in Paris yesterday, “could rekindle a long-running privacy row over whether cockpits should also be monitored visually to decipher future accidents, especially now that security cameras are part of everyday life”.

Who has brought the case and why?

The airline has already compensated the families of those killed in what The Independent described as “the worst plane crash in Air France history”, but always denied criminal responsibility.

Victims were of 33 nationalities, and their families from around the world who are among the plaintiffs “have fought for more than a decade to see the case come to trial”, reported news site.

Investigating magistrates overseeing the case had dropped charges of involuntary manslaughter against Air France and Airbus in 2019, attributing the crash mainly to pilot error, but in 2021 a Paris appeals court ruled there was sufficient evidence to allow a trial to go ahead.

RTE said the trial will expose “bitter divisions that have raged behind the scenes between two of France's flagship firms for over a decade.

“Airbus blames pilot error for the crash while the French carrier claims confusing alarms and data overwhelmed the pilots.”

A spokesperson for a victims’ campaign group told AFP ahead of proceedings, which are likely to last nine weeks: “We expect an impartial and exemplary trial so that this never happens again.”

“It is the first time French companies have been directly placed on trial after an air crash, rather than individuals,” said The Guardian. The paper added that while Air France and Airbus, both of whom deny involuntary manslaughter, face potential fines of up to €225,000 – “a fraction of their annual revenues” – they could “suffer damage to their reputations if found criminally responsible”.

1. Why you should visit Paris

Put simply, “because it’s Paris”, the “tirelessly picturesque” City of Love and Lights, said The Times. The French capital is a city where you can “eat like a king” and “marvel at some of the finest historical sights” in the world.

Paris, which sits on the River Seine, is the second most visited city in Europe. Blending the past and the present, romanticism and revolution, it’s not hard to see why so many people flock to it each year.

With so much to do, Paris is “on pretty much every traveller’s bucket list”, said Gabrielle on the Worldpackers blog. The diversity of the city means that it can be enjoyed by those who have money but also travellers who are on a budget.

2. Top attractions: things to see and do

Architecture and ingenuity

Because Paris has been the “beating cultural heart of Europe over much of the last thousand years”, it offers a variety of architecture, said Rough Guide. “From grand monuments to exquisite, secretive little nooks”, there is so much to look at when walking around the streets and boulevards.

For fans of the gothic, there is the famous Notre-Dame de Paris, which will reopen in spring 2024, and equally stunning is the 13th-century Sainte Chapelle. Fast forward 700 years and there’s the Pompidou, which opened in the 1970s and is a “radical inside-out” museum – a must for fans of modern architecture and art.

And, of course, a first trip to Paris wouldn’t be complete without climbing the Eiffel Tower, an “excitingly improbable structure” that is a remarkable feat of engineering.

Museums and art

Paris is home to around 130 museums and art galleries with the Louvre often topping travellers’ lists. Though it is most famous for hosting Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, this “former fortress and royal palace” has much more to offer, said The New York Times. With countless rooms dedicated to paintings of French history and “treasures of the Italian Renaissance”, it would take three days to see everything.

Beyond the Louvre, “there’s a museum for visual art in all its forms”, said Time Out. Perhaps the most interesting is the Musée d’Orsay, a converted train station which sits on the banks of the river. The museum houses paintings by artists from Van Gough to Monet and includes the latter’s La Gare Saint-Lazare, which is “considered the first Impressionist painting”.

A boat trip along the river

Views from above the city are incredible, whether that’s from the Eiffel Tower or the hill of Montmartre, but the best place to see its evolution is the river. The Seine is the lifeline of Paris, playing a defensive role in its history, as well as an economic one.

Most of Paris’ iconic landmarks sit along the river banks and cruising down it the Seine is like travelling through time. From a boat, it’s possible to see buildings and monuments from the middle ages all the way to the 20th century. Because of their historical importance, the banks have been given Unesco world heritage site status.

Shopping

Paris is often dubbed the fashion capital of the world and is the city where Coco Channel opened her first shop in 1910. Today, 31 Rue Cambon is still a Chanel store, surrounded by other designer outlets from Burberry and Dior.

On the other end of the scale from the high-end designers is the more affordable flea market of Port de Vanves. Come rain or shine, every weekend of the year, the market’s 380 merchants sell wares ranging from 18th-century furniture to photographs and postcards.

3. Restaurants, cafes and wine: where to eat and drink

Food

“Parisian life is quite literally arranged around food”, said The Telegraph. For the natives, eating is more than a nutritional necessity, “it’s a daily opportunity to enjoy the pleasures of great food”.

For a taste of the city’s cultural history, visit the Café de la Paix. Built in the 1860s, it’s one of Paris’ most iconic cafes and has played host to the likes of Victor Hugo, Ernest Hemingway and Serge Lifar – a famed Ukrainian ballet master of the Opera House, which lies opposite. The restaurant offers a wide selection of oysters and the traditional cheese-topped French onion soup is a must-order.

The diversity of the city has opened up its cuisine and it’s possible to sample great foods from around the world. One of the “local institutions on Rue de Bretagne” is Chez Omar, a family-friendly restaurant that serves North African cuisine.

Wine

It would be an understatement to say the French love their wine. Most restaurants will offer a comprehensive wine list and the city is packed with cosy wine bars to help you get your fill.

Le Baron Rouge, a “laid-back” wine bar near the Place d’Aligre market, is “a throwback to another era, with just a few tables plus giant wine barrels along the walls for filling and refilling your take-home bottles”, said FodorTravel. Come on a Sunday morning (“yes, morning”) when the bar is “packed with locals” who want to “linger over good food and that first petit blanc of the day”.

4. Hotels and accommodation: where to stay

Embody the height of French luxury and sleep like a King at Le Grand Contrôle, at the palace of Versailles. Staying here “provides an unrivalled exclusive glimpse” of French royal life, said Conde Nast Traveller. It’s even possible to arrange for “king’s wake up call” which features an orange-scented milk bubble bath and the sounds of classical music.

The Parisian hotel scene is like “some endlessly absorbent miracle sponge”, added the magazine. It’s therefore no surprise for it to feature a hotel inspired by the roaring Jazz age of the 1920s. Hôtel Rochechouart is located in the Pigalle neighbourhood and is an “art deco relic”.

In keeping with the art deco theme is Les Piaules. Like most major cities in the world, Paris is home to plenty of hostels perfect for travellers on a budget. Les Piaules was opened by three Parisian travellers and offers great views of the city’s monuments.

5. Transport: how to get there

There are many ways to travel to Paris from the UK, including by train, car and plane.

The most direct route to the city centre is by Eurostar. Departing from London King’s Cross, the two-hour 37-minute journey through the Channel Tunnel ends at Gare du Nord station, right in the heart of the city.

Flying from London to Paris is even quicker, with flights taking just under an hour. Charles de Gaulle airport is the second busiest in Europe with around 600 flights arriving daily. Bus B departs from the airport every six minutes and the 30-minute ride will take you right into central Paris.

You can also drive to Paris via Eurotunnel Le Shuttle from Folkestone to Calais, which only takes 35 minutes. The drive from Calais to Paris, via the Eurotunnel terminal, then takes around three hours and 30 minutes.

Whenever I visit Paris one of my priorities is to have a good magret de canard for dinner. Duck tastes better in Paris: the atmosphere of the city permeates the fat; the nonchalant chic of her inhabitants is infused in the sauce.

Despite this clearly being romanticised nonsense which I have completely imagined, when I explained it to Romaine – the friendly and knowledgeable concierge at Maison Albar Hotels Le Vendome – she did not bat an eyelid at my silliness. Instead she made a quick, discrete phone call and within two minutes informed me I had a reservation that evening to eat what she assured me was “the best duck in the city”. She was right.

Why stay here?

In addition to the thoughtful personal touches and impressive local knowledge of the staff, the location of Maison Albar Hotels Le Vendome makes it an ideal choice for exploring Paris. Found in the heart of the 9th arrondissement, in the Opéra district, you are within walking distance of all the main tourist destinations. The hotel itself is set behind a wood-panelled façade dating from the late 1880s – a remnant of the building’s previous incarnation as Le Lyon d’Or, one of Paris’ original cabaret restaurants – but once inside the aesthetic is sharp and modern.

The Golden Lion homage continues throughout the décor, with sculptures in the public areas and motifs on each room door paying tribute to the legacy. There is a relaxed elegance to the lobby and lounge; plush velvet furniture makes for comfortable spaces to sit with a coffee and plan your day. Rooms are kitted out with opulent marble bathrooms and cutting-edge technology – they’re not huge, but generous by central Paris standards. Space is at a premium in this city, and many other hotels in the area have sacrificed an extra metre here and there to squeeze in more than the 51 rooms and suites found at Maison Albar Hotels Le Vendome.

Descending the stairs from the lobby to the lower ground – the stairwell itself is another restored period feature, with beautiful mosaic work originally installed when the property housed the Russian Bank for Foreign Trade in the 1930s – leads us to a fitness centre and spa. Parisian luxury cosmetics brand Carita provides the massage treatments, and the pool is set under a huge skylight. The ability to enjoy a swim under natural light is a rare treat in this part of town, and the perfect way to energise the body in the morning.

Eating and drinking

At the heart of the hotel is Yakuza Paris by celebrated Portuguese chef Olivier Da Costa. The restaurant serves an exciting and intriguing array of Japanese cuisine blended with south European flavours. Guests are offered the option of sitting around the open kitchen, allowing them to marvel at the knife skills of the team as they prepare the fresh sushi as well as having their selections personally presented and explained by the chefs. This approach offers an interesting insight into the thought behind the pairings, making the dining experience feel a little more collaborative and personal. Highlights include the nigiri engawa and taco sakana.

Yakuza Paris is also where breakfast is served each morning, with the option of eating al fresco in the Kyoto Garden if weather permits. The garden is an excellent use of the vestibule at the centre of the building, and the wind chimes ringing out delicately from the trees make this space a peaceful oasis at any time of day.

Outside of the hotel’s walls, the streets of the surrounding area offer plenty of options at all levels of the gastronomic pyramid. That magnificent duck located for me on the first night was only ten minutes’ walk away at French Paradox in the Passage des Panoramas. Classic Parisian cafés are all around, but Café de la Paix has the best view of the Opéra; if that’s a little too tourist-obvious, try Chez Marianne on Boulevard des Italiens for a bit more local atmosphere.

What to do

If a massage and swim in the spa followed by a tranquil tea in the garden haven’t quite filled enough of your day, a stroll through the local architecture surely will. The Opéra Garnier next door is one of the most spectacular buildings in a city known for grandeur, but it is far from the only gem within walking distance of Le Vendome. A short stroll to the east brings you to the smaller and lesser known, but similarly impressive, Opera Comique. Boulevard Haussmann is home to Les Grands Magasins – the famous department stores of Paris – and following this street to the west will see you arrive in short order to l’Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées. Just ten minutes’ walk south from the hotel, down Rue de la Paix and past the magnificent Vendôme itself, will bring you to Rue de Rivoli and all the globally-significant museums and galleries which surround it.

Paris is a city filled with cultural opportunities and hidden gems to discover. The location of Le Vendome makes it the perfect launchpad from which to uncover as many of them as possible; the comprehensive knowledge and personal attention to detail of its team will help you find some you never even knew existed. This is a young hotel occupying a grand old Parisian building, and this blend of sleek modernity and classic charm creates a warm and inviting atmosphere. You will be glad to treat it as your second home while you seek out facets of the French capital previously only known to residents.

Rooms at the Maison Albar Hotels Le Vendome start from £354 on a B&B basis. 7 rue du Helder, 75009 Paris, France; maison-albar-hotels-le-vendome.com

Perhaps it’s the extensive list of rom-coms that have been set in the city of love, or the scenes painted by the early 20th-century artists who treated the French capital’s streets as their studio, but there’s something about Paris that inspires a sense of playfulness.

And for those who lean towards the more theatrical side of life, Meliá Collection’s Hotel Villa Marquis offers a suitable backdrop for a city-break spectacle. Having reopened last June after an extensive refurbishment, the hotel has taken on its own new character – one dressed in luxurious velvets, with elegant rose gold embellishments.

Why stay here?

The location of Hotel Villa Marquis is certainly enviable, with its prime position on the edge of the city’s Golden Triangle between avenue Montaigne, avenue George V and avenue des Champs-Elysées. Given this, it’s no surprise that its interiors are designed with elegance and sophistication in mind, with rich colour choices and materials used to dress the newly-redesigned space.

Architects and designers Álvaro Sans and daughter Adriana clearly embraced the French capital’s artistic side when renovating the hotel. The intimate reception area is somewhat beguiling, giving little hint as to the size of the establishment. With a total of 63 rooms, this is no small operation, but the smartly-conceived design gives a sense of traditional, cosy Parisian spaces mixed with a fresh, airy modernity.

With the lift typically Parisian – in that it errs on the claustrophobic side of small – some guests may choose to take the plush staircase to their chambers. The climb is worth the effort, and they’ll be rewarded with a sizeable room in which to recline and watch the world go by via floor-to-ceiling windows.

Comfort is a statement feature across Meliá Collection’s portfolio, and Hotel Villa Marquis is no exception. From the beds to the soft furnishings, robes and thoughtful design details, each room invites guests to make themselves at home and take advantage of a quiet space to relax in the non-stop city. The bathrooms are a real treat, with huge baths and waterfall showers – the perfect remedy after a long day strolling around the capital’s streets.

The theatrical undertones of the rooms are offset by technical diagrams and engineering drawings that pay homage to the industrial spirit of Paris and its monumental landmarks. Some guests need only to poke their head out of the window to marvel at perhaps the most famous…

Eating and drinking

Dos Almas is a new addition to the hotel – and a welcome one at that. For visitors who are tired of overpriced moules frites and steak tartare, this restaurant’s menu offers refreshingly authentic Spanish fare, including tapas sharing plates, meaty mains and the highly-recommended house sangria.

In collaboration with professional dancer Ruben Molina, diners are treated to an exclusive flamenco performance once a month. It was my first time seeing the traditional dance in the flesh and though I was initially a little sceptical, being some miles from the Spanish border, it was a delight to experience the dance and speak with Molina about how he has worked to bring the art form to Paris.

An extensive breakfast buffet is also served in the restaurant, and is sure to set guests up for a day for exploration and exertion.

If you’re going all out, the nearby three-Michelin-starred Epicure will deliver a “culinary experience to remember” – although “the 400-euro price tag per head will seem frankly absurd” if you are just dropping in for a quick meal, said The Telegraph. Le 39v offers a “refined but relaxed” alternative on avenue George V.

What to do

If you spot the sign in reception directing you to the underground gym, you’ll be rewarded with a small but well-equipped and stylishly designed workout spot. But if exercise facilities aren’t quite your idea of a fun time, then guests can play dress-up in the Golden Triangle’s unrivalled shops, offering what is surely among the world’s best haute couture.

And if the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe or Sacre Coeur aren’t quite providing you with the view you’re after, there’s only one thing for it: take to the sky. For a real adventure, Hotel Villa Marquis’s team are only too happy to arrange helicopter rides for guests, offering the unique opportunity to experience Paris from an aerial perspective.

Guests will be greeted with champagne and have the chance to chat with their pilot before strapping in and getting on their way. With a range of destinations available, there’s surely no city break activity that could be more memorable, nor hit all the right kinds of rom-com drama notes.

Once back on firm ground, be sure to venture out in the evening and see the Eiffel Tower light up on the hour. Given that it’s mere moments from the hotel’s front door, it’d be rude not to.

Rooms start from £260 per (B&B basis); melia.com

The French capital is synonymous with art, style and history – and as a visitor, finding a way to experience all three in a time-limited city break can be something of a challenge.

For a whistlestop trip to Paris, I’d argue there’s almost no better location – at least where I’ve had the joy of staying – than Hotel Maison Colbert. Tucked away just off Quai de Montebello, which runs along the southern side of the Seine river, it takes mere minutes to walk from the hotel’s charming reception to the iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral, beloved Shakespeare and Company bookshop, and the renowned cafe culture of the Latin Quarter.

“Boutique” doesn’t get close to doing this Meliá Collection hotel justice. The impressive building, which dates back to the 16th century, has the feel of a palatial gallery. Designed by Álvaro Sans and his daughter Adrianna Sans, Hotel Maison Colbert offers the chicness one would hope for when visiting Paris.

Why stay here?

The hotel itself strikes that enviable Parisian balance between an effortlessly chic aesthetic and comfort in its most luxurious form. Enter through the street-facing courtyard, overlooked by Juliet balconies and windows trimmed with greenery, before being welcomed in the decadent reception. Classic French furniture adds more than a little style to checking in.

Being a Meliá Collection hotel, it’s only fair that there’s a little Spanish flare on show too. Each of Maison Colbert’s 39 rooms are inspired by a Joaquín Sorolla painting – a fitting choice, given Sorolla is dubbed “Spain’s Impressionist”, according to The National Gallery.

Each room or suite has been individually designed to maximise the space. Have a coffee and peer out the window to the Notre-Dame Cathedral, if you’re lucky enough to have a room with a view on it, or flick through art books and magazines while reclining on the magnificent beds.

The red velvet curtains in my room added a Moulin Rouge-esque flare to the ambience (which is only a good thing, in my opinion), and the en suites feature waterfall showers and sumptuous Rituals toiletries.

Eating and drinking

Café Clotilde, named in tribute to Sorolla’s wife, serves an extensive breakfast menu, with a buffet, hot and cold menu, and delicious cafe au laits (or whichever caffeine hit you might require). Enjoy it in the stylish dining room, or al fresco in the courtyard.

For lunch and evening fare, walk just a few minutes around the corner from the hotel and you’ll be presented with a host of different eateries catering to different budgets. Atelier Maître Albert is one that comes highly recommended by the hotel. With a menu designed around grilling and spit-roasts, it’s a feast for meat-eaters, and features changing daily specials depending on what’s on offer at the market.

A little further into the heart of the Latin Quarter, the famous Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots fight it out for literary-lovers’ attention. Both brasseries have hosted their fair share of creatives and intellectuals, including Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. Though a touch on the touristy side as a result, it’s worth stopping and watching the world go by with a coffee in hand – or something stronger.

What to do

After idling along historic Parisian streets and visiting the city’s unrivalled art galleries and most-famed attractions, you might be after a slightly different view of the French capital. There’s arguably few better than those offered by a cruise along the Seine.

Arranged through Hotel Maison Colbert, you won’t find yourself packed into one of the many tourist-laden ferries that traipse up and down the river each day. Instead, a much smaller (and more comfortable) vessel will allow you to drift up the river at a more leisurely pace for a much more enjoyable experience.

And if fashion is more your creative outlet than literature, then there’s no better place to express it than in Paris. The history of couture is interwoven with the city’s, but experiencing this cultural legacy as a visitor can be a tricky task, unless you happen to be visiting during Fashion Week.

Hotel Maison Colbert has collaborated with Teran Conde, a Spanish brand with its roots firmly planted in both Valencia and Paris, to offer guests an exclusive opportunity to learn first-hand about the art of couture. Spend a morning crafting a couture accessory with designer Esperanza, using traditional techniques and exquisite materials to leave Paris with a souvenir that’s leagues above your run-of-the-mill fridge magnet…

Hotel Maison Colbert, 7 Rue de l’Hôtel Colbert, 75005 Paris, France. Rooms start from £302 per night (B&B basis); melia.com

Rats are victims of human prejudice and should be renamed to remove the stigma that afflicts them, according to a councillor in Paris. Douchka Markovic, who is responsible for animal welfare and pest control, said the rodents “play an important role in the sewers by evacuating hundreds of tonnes of waste and unblocking the pipes”. Markovic has faced opposition for her views, said The Times, as rodents are “running riot” in the French capital.

Man becomes Italy’s oldest graduate

A 98-year-old man has become Italy’s oldest graduate for the second time. Giuseppe Paterno has added a masters in history and philosophy from the University of Palermo to a previous degree in the same subjects which he earned there two years ago. Paterno’s family announced on Facebook that he had passed the latest degree with top marks. Born in 1923, Paterno wasn’t able to go to university as a young man because he served in the navy during World War Two from the age of 20, said Reuters.

Man protests outside wrong hotel

A man who drunkenly protested in front of a hotel because staff wouldn’t let him access his room was moved on by police – because he had the wrong building. Officers were called to deal with an intoxicated man lying in protest on the pavement outside of the Premier Inn in Bournemouth, reported The Metro. “He laid on the floor in protest,” said the force. “Officers returned him to the hotel he had a booking for over the road.”

1. Liverpool FC and its fans are entitled to the formal investigation they demand

Voice of The Mirror

on tear gas and ‘terror’

“Mercifully, nobody was killed” during the chaos that ensued before Saturday’s Champions League final at the Stade de France in Paris, says the Daily Mirror. “Scarred Liverpool fans” have likened their treatment to the Hillsborough tragedy. “The terror of those tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed, including children, is a stain on Europe’s football chiefs and French policing,” the paper continues. We need “apologies” and “lessons to be learned”. There have been “excuses” from Uefa and France’s interior minister “inaccurately shifting responsibility on to the innocent”. This “only adds insult to injury”. Merseyside Police who were in Paris “know the truth”, and “so too do many witnesses and journalists, including our own”, says the Mirror.

Read more

2. This Elizabethan age is forgetting toleration

Trevor Phillips in The Times

on a bygone era

“No one would have been oblivious to the pomp and splendour” of the Queen’s coronation back in 1953, writes Trevor Phillips in The Times. Even for immigrants “fresh off boats from the Caribbean, the glittering ceremony promised the new start” for which many had travelled to the UK. Phillips says there’s a “compelling” link between this “Elizabethan age and the first”. There are two “defining ideas of our time” that this boils down to: colonialism, he says, and religious and political toleration. While this era has “managed the retreat from colonialism deftly”, toleration “increasingly looks like a catastrophic failure”. As the Queen’s reign “reaches its final chapter”, the government “is fulfilling its promise to take back control in a fashion that mimics the worst of the earlier era” to “stamp out unacceptable views”. “Who ever thought we’d see the Star Chamber back in action?” asks Phillips.

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3. Could this ‘authentic’ photo app be the death of Instagram?

Harry Readhead in The Independent

on the growth of BeReal

BeReal “wants to banish the smoke and smash the mirrors that come with” other social media platforms, writes Harry Readhead in the Independent. “It sees itself as the ‘anti-Instagram’, making a virtue of bland normalcy.” Its aim is “authenticity”, an idea that today “obsesses us”. And that may be for “good reason”, says Readhead: “the online world tends towards the superficial” and authentic people “are usually more trustworthy, have closer relationships and are happier and healthier”. But overuse of the term means authenticity’s true meaning is being “rapidly watered down”. Usually authenticity “really means something else: transparency or consistency or vulnerability”. Soon BeReal “will not be promoting authenticity at all, but something more like authenticity-as-performance”. There’s a “small irony” in the fact that BeReal “paid students to download and review it”, in part fuelling its “extraordinary growth” this year. “That doesn’t sound very authentic to me,” says Readhead.

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4. Andy Burnham is a prime Labour leader candidate, but also a mayor. That’s a problem

Martin Kettle in The Guardian

on career complications

The “Andy Burnham problem” is “structural, cultural, very British, and it needs addressing”, says Martin Kettle in The Guardian. The issue is the “mismatch between the realities of British politics and governance” and “the assumed supremacy of the unreformed Westminster parliament on the other”. Burnham’s situation “is particularly topical, because there may shortly be a vacancy for leader of the Labour party” and Manchester’s mayor is the “clear favourite as successor”. But he’s not a member of parliament, which would make him ineligible for the role. Arranging for him to stand in a by-election “would need a lot of fast fixing from the top” if he were to “pull off” becoming an MP in time for a contest. “The present mess” is the result of a “failing system” and it “needs a rethink”. The “answer” would be to recognise devolution’s “real strength but also its real failings… Do that, and we might be on the way to solving the Burnham problem.”

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5. The time for talk is over – the West must pull together to defeat Putin

Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun

on war and peace

“Diplomats, they say, are sent abroad to lie for their country,” writes Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun. The “smirking Russian envoy Andrei Kelin surpassed himself yesterday” when he “lied and lied and lied” during a BBC interview in which he was shown CCTV footage of two Ukrainians being shot by Russian soldiers. “This, scoffed Kelin, was a ‘computer game or a joke’, a hoax cooked up in Kyiv.” There was “another whopper” – as drone images showed “once-beautiful Mariupol flattened” by Russian forces, “the Kremlin mouthpiece insisted, this showed Ukrainians were bombing their own citizens for propaganda purposes”. Kavanagh says “nobody with a brain would believe a word from Mad Vlad Putin’s marionette”, but “the harsh fact” is that “brave Ukraine” is “no longer quite winning”. “French surrender monkey Emmanuel Macron has jumped at the idea of peace talks,” as has Germany’s Olaf Scholz. It is not time to talk, says Kavanagh. “It is time to fight and keep on fighting.”

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If walls could talk, they still wouldn’t at Château Voltaire. The hotel is far too polished and exclusive for tittle-tattle. Established by Thierry Gillier, the founder of French fashion label Zadig&Voltaire, this quiet and sophisticated 31-room five-star address in the 1st arrondissement has an air of calm refinement that encapsulates what we know and love about Parisian chic.

The French would define the aesthetic as “entre le bon sens et le bon goût”, that sweet spot between good sense and good taste, but there’s more to it than this. Thoughtful curation and a dash of decadence tilts Château Voltaire’s well-studied style towards an allure that’s achingly cool.

Why stay here?

Interiors demonstrate elegant restraint with a touch of bohemian flair thanks to trendy Parisian design studio Festen and Franck Durand whose creative agency is behind the campaigns of cult French brands Sandro and Isabel Marant. Durand is also married to fashion icon and former Vogue Paris editor-in-chief, Emmanuelle Alt, which suggests he is well versed in the art of living well.

The hotel’s comfy salon sets an arty tone: it’s both minimalist and perfectly on point with its Parisian bourgeois charm. Abstract paintings in soft muted tones hang alongside elegant mid-century furniture bedecked with well-chosen antiques.

A snapshot of this area might include a stone bust of a Jean Cocteau-like character, a rare Slim Arons photobook, various knurled earthenware vases and a collection of rustic faience plates, no doubt hand-selected from an eclectic mix of auction houses, luxury boutiques and Paris’ famous Marché aux Puces.

This breezily stylish decor extends to the bedrooms, where the hotel’s love affair with its Baroque leaf patterned carpet continues. Actress Julia Fox was recently pictured sprawled across this plush golden and green clad floor looking suitably sex-kittenish in a PVC outfit.

Beds are dressed in beautifully pressed white linen, caramel-coloured cushions and soft, fuzzy mohair spreads. The highlight has to be the pantry-like mini bar replete with luxury French gourmandises and treats, including boutique candles.

White marble bathrooms with double sinks are big enough to dress à deux, or maybe even à trois. Model Laetitia Casta, French songstress Clara Luciani and fashion designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin have all been recent guests, so best pack a suitably chic wardrobe.

The food and drink

Château Voltaire doesn’t have to try very hard to attract a young fashionable crowd. First, there’s its Brasserie Emil, full every night of the week and helmed by a young handsome chef who has charmed the city’s beau monde with his langoustine ceviches on homemade sourdough and fragrant risotto served in individual Mauviel copper pots. Everything is delicious and the ambience is always buzzing.

Most people begin the evening at the hotel’s bijou La Coquille d’Or bar, which, as the name suggest, has plush interior and seductive ambience as if you are ensconced in a magical clam shell clad in dark wood and lashings of plush velvet.

What sets it apart?

Breakfast at Château Voltaire is a fine dining experience in itself. Various courses arrive in dinky and delicious portions – imagine a scoop of crushed avocado on a thin disc of toast, finessed with a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds. You’ll have room for lunch, which matters in Paris.

Hotel guests are also entitled to exclusive use of the hotel’s spa for an hour. Book your slot and use the small pool and sauna without interuption. As you might imagine, this is a big hit with couples.

Out and about

Château Voltaire is in the geographical heart of Paris, at walking distance from The Tuileries Garden, Garnier Opera, the Louvre and the Palais-Royal. The luxury shopping haven of Saint-Honoré is also a stone’s throw away.

What to know before you book

If you intend to eat at Brasserie Emil, reserve your table well in advance, especially on weekends. Those who really want to splash out can rent the hotel’s top floor apartment complete with garden terrace designed by Louis Benech, arguably France’s most famous living landscape designer who has designed green spaces the world over including Versailles’ water theatre grove and Diane von Furstenberg’s rooftop garden in Manhattan.

Château Voltaire, 55 Rue Saint-Roch, 75001 Paris, France; chateauvoltaire.com

Paris is set for a major spruce-up after a social media campaign shone a spotlight on decay in France’s capital city.

The city-wide makeover will include the introduction of a “zero-tolerance approach to dumping rubbish in public”, and “efforts to combat tagging and illegal posters will also be stepped up”, The Telegraph reported. “Unsightly temporary yellow road markings for new cycling lanes” will be removed and “recently installed concrete barriers” will be replaced with “more discreet” versions.

The raft of policies to beautify the city were announced by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo in response to growing public criticism fuelled by images posted with the hashtag “#saccageparis” (“trashed Paris”). According to the newspaper, the hashtag “went viral in the first half of 2021, with residents posting photos of piled up rubbish, rotting benches, abandoned scooters, or badly maintained planted areas in the street”.

‘Paris is ugly’

The deteriorating appearance of the City of Lights has been a growing subject of concern in recent years. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of hit 2001 film Amelie, told IndieWire in 2019 that a sequel to the romantic comedy would be “a bad idea” because Paris “is so ugly now”.

“It’s so difficult to shoot because there are constructions sites everywhere,” he said.

Journalist and television presenter Stephane Bern echoed those complaints during a recent interview with The Times. “​​I love the city but I don’t like what it’s becoming,” said Bern, who claimed his friend President Emmanuel Macron also feared that the capital was falling into a state of disrepair under the city’s left-wing council.

“Daily life in Paris is hell now,” said Bern, adding: “Wherever I go, people stop me to say, ‘You’re right. We can’t stand it anymore.’”

Photos shared with the #saccageparis hashtag by residents have highlighted “poorly maintained areas” throughout the city, with “concrete blocks left strewn in streets, and damaged street lights badly fixed with tape”, The Connexion reported.

Social media users have also criticised “some initiatives designed to improve the capital”, including “green squares” around trees that were “intended to enable residents to grow plants, but instead have become overrun with weeds, rubbish and dog mess”, said the Monaco-based magazine.

The Telegraph reported that many critics have directed their anger “at city hall for replacing or neglecting Paris’s unique architectural heritage, including its street furniture bequeathed from the middle of the 19th century under Napoleon III”.

The mayor’s office initially denounced the hashtag as a “smear campaign”. But Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said this week that the public outcry had “been useful in the way that it forced us to question ourselves and react”.

Beautification project

Socialist Mayor Hidalgo, who is currently running to become French president, has made cleaning up parts of Paris a key priority since first being elected to rule the city back in 2014.

In January last year, she announced plans to turn most of the Champs-Elysees into parks and pavements, dramatically reducing the space given over to cars.

Her efforts to combat pollution in Paris by reducing the number of cars on the streets “won her re-election in Paris”, said The New Statesman’s Europe correspondent Ido Vock, and was “a shrewd political calculation”.

The new plans to give the city a facelift will include an extension of Hidalgo’s early policies. “Many temporary cycling lanes, many of which were introduced during the first lockdown as more people began to cycle, will now be made permanent,” said The Connexion.

But some of Hidalgo’s additions will reportedly be scrapped, including “ugly modern street furniture (such as modern benches and odd-shaped rubbish bins)” that social media critics said were “disfiguring” Paris.

European cities are starting the gentle process of tentatively waking from their Covid-induced slumber, and are beginning to welcome guests once again. Paris - an institution of luxury and beauty like no other in the world - is at the forefront of that reawakening.

The Covid hangover continues to be visible, but for every lost piece of normality, there is something unique to be gained by visiting the French capital now. The virus’ impact on visitor numbers has transformed Paris into a calmer, more spacious city, and while it has taken a beating, it has come up fighting - and is now eager to please.

It remains a global bastion of fun, elegance and luxury, and while things are different, the version of Paris emerging from lockdown is just the latest iteration of a city that has got back to its feet time and time again.

Paris is, after all, a moveable feast.

Where to stay

The Renaissance Paris Vendôme Hotel is a boutique five-star property in the 1er arrondissement in downtown Paris. It sits a block away from the Place Vendôme and a range of world-class boutiques, and it is moments from Opera Garnier, Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Palais Royal. The Louvre is also just a short walk away from the chic neighbourhood, through the beautiful Tuileries Garden.

The rooms - like the rest of the stylish hotel’s decor - are spacious and modern, with distinctly Parisian touches, and a classical foundation reflected in marble floors and bathrooms.

We stayed in the Parisian Corner Suite, the interior of which was remodelled in 2018 by the French designer Didier Gomez. The contemporary, chic design was cast in the best light by four large windows which opened out onto the Parisian streets, and allowed the hum of the restaurant below to drift into the room.

The hotel is kitted out with a range of luxury features, including a cutting edge spa and fitness centre, which includes a heated indoor pool lit by a skylight. When we stayed, Covid restrictions meant that only one room was allowed to use the spa and pool at one time; fortunately, we got access whenever we wanted, and having the place to ourselves added to the luxury experience.

Where to eat: Le Clarence

Le Clarence is one of the best fine dining experiences in a city where competition for accolades is high; Paris is the unquestionably the world leader in the league table for quantity of quality restaurants.

We arrived and were led up the main staircase into the plush grand salon, where we started proceedings with glasses of Jacques Lassaigne Les Vignes de Montgueux champagne, accompanied by a maritime medley of squid tempura and plump whelks, and Comté cheese Gougères.

Our eye-balling of the other diners was interrupted by the sommelier bringing us the wine menu on an iPad. The selection was so vast that the restaurant had presumably decided that shelling out for a few tablets was better for its reputation than the wide-scale deforestation that would be caused by printing off the wine list in hard copy.

The sommelier asked to choose what we fancied; preferably something that would go with a tuna starter and pigeon main.

About five minutes into the 78-page menu, boasting wines more expensive than most mortgages, we popped the tablet back on the table and decided we’d let the sommelier decide for us. When we told him, he looked relieved; if Covid has taught us anything, it’s that we need to appreciate expertise.

The pairings at Le Clarence were in a different league - it felt as though the wine was an essential extension of the food, as if they had been one entity temporarily separated into dish and glass, and brought back together by the genius of the sommeliers.

The food started with a bouche-amusing langoustine in crunchy filo, topped with pig’s ear and melon, and finished off with raspberry shavings and kimchi juice.

Next was tuna, dressed in three different ways - one dish with lobster coral juice and sorrel, another brushed with fermented blueberry and radish, and the third in a vinaigrette, combined with prawn and sitting on a nasturtium flower alongside a tender prawn.

The starter was paired with a Rodolphe Demougeot 2017 Meursault, a gently citrusy white with a good minerality and oaky and buttery notes.

The main was tender pigeon breast dressed with cooking jus, purslane and tuna bottarga. The ever growing satellite of plates orbiting the pigeon included pigeon heart and Colonnata bacon, alongside courgette and caviar with Karashi mustard, fried mashed potato balls, dauphinoise potatoes with cumin and béarnaise sauce, and a toasted brioche from a central Parisian bakery thrown in for good measure.

The accompanying wine was Le Clarence’s own Haut-Brion Pessac-Léognan 2007 - a ripe mix of red and black fruits with a long, classy finish that elevated the taste of the pigeon to near-impossible heights.

Pudding was a feast of many wonderful parts, and a sum that was even greater than them. A strawberry zabaglione with almond biscuit was served alongside fragrant mara des bois strawberries and a strawberry and blackberry sorbet on a bed of cottage cheese. Next was a pistachio baklava and honey, followed by an iced chocolate mousse and small ball of chocolate chip marshmallow.

The desert wine was a Clarendelle Amberwine Monbazillac 2015, a smooth and elegant wine created by Le Clarence owner Prince Robert of Luxembourg.

Where to eat: Balagan

Le Clarence was the pinnacle of fine dining, but our choice the following night was the height of fun - though not without an impressive food offering.

Balagan, housed in the Renaissance Paris Vendôme Hotel, is a playful and cosmopolitan Israeli restaurant that more than lives up to its Hebrew translation - “Joyful Bazar”.

After starting off with cocktails in the Balagan bar - a tequila and absinthe-based “Sassy Frenchie” and elderflower Collins-esque “Le Persifleur” - we moved on to the chef’s table.

We had the best seat in the house to watch the Balagan chefs, led by Elior Ben Arosh, demonstrate their craft with creativity, talent and genuine joy.

The chef at our end of the station had one eye on preparing the food, but kept the other on us, personally taking charge of making sure we were enjoying ourselves. He took the time to recommend us a bottle of wine and have it brought to our table, and chatted to us about our time in Paris while casually preparing dinner for a busy Friday night clientele.

When the food began to arrive, it didn’t stop coming. Tuna tartare dressed with almonds with nectarines, dates and herb salad started us off, accompanied by a fattoush salad and generous helping of perfectly prepared babaganoush.

The main course of octopus fillet was the stand out dish, cooked in a charcoal Josper oven to give it a delicious barbecued taste and satisfying meaty texture.

For presentation, pudding was certainly the stand out act. The music in the restaurant was turned up loud as a large sheet of baking paper was rolled along the chef’s station in front of us, and each chef took it in turns to slam down another element of dessert on to the surface. Brownies, baklava, banana and blueberries were scattered liberally alongside dates, chocolate and biscotti.

Every member of staff and a fair few diners gathered around the chef’s station clapping and singing to the music, while the head chef conducted proceedings by bellowing through a megaphone.

After managing what we could, we returned to the bar - by this point absolutely packed - to find a bartender celebrating her 30th birthday by having her friends behind the bar lead a song for her, while the whole room joined in.

The megaphone reappeared, and the bartender gave a moving speech which would have admittedly made more sense if the wine hadn’t been flowing so freely, and I’d tried a bit harder at French A-Level.

The next day we bumped into one of the waiters who asked if we were having a good afternoon, and suggested completely accurately that the morning might have been more of a struggle. “You really joined in. We love that - that’s what we want.”

What to see and do

In the momentary pauses between dreamy food and drink, we took a quintessentially Parisian journey down the river on which the city was built, the Seine.

Paris Luxury Boat offers private cruises down the Seine, giving customers the choice between the impressive runabout Kim, or the even more striking Shivas, which belonged to Sofia Loren during the 60s.

Cruising down the river and taking in the beautiful city from the water, the trip was undoubtedly the most film-star experience of the visit - though I was forced to concede that the numerous heads turning from the riverbank were more impressed by the boat than the journalist sitting in the back.

A must-do when visiting Paris is to head out of the city on a trip to the Palace of Versailles. Hidden Gems Tours offers private tours which takes tourists from the centre of Paris to the Palace by car, and returns them home after their visit.

Visitors are taken on a tour of the extensive gardens before heading inside the Palace itself. While it is striking to look around, it is the knowledgable and affable tour guides’ engaging descriptions of the history of the place that make the experience truly worthwhile. Lorenzo - who studied French history at the Sorbonne University - was the perfect person to show us around.

The Palace is currently welcoming just a fraction of the visitors it would usually see, which means you won’t have to stand around in long queues.

Similarly, we found our trip to the Louvre was pleasantly without queues - a big improvement on a previous visit, when I had spent two hours waiting outside. Even the queue to see the Mona Lisa was just about bearable, though why people are so interested in the archetypal plain Jane, I will never know.

How to get there

The Eurostar goes throughout the day from St Pancras International station in central London, and gets you into Gare du Nord in the centre of Paris in less than two-and-a-half hours.

For a first class experience, travel Business Premier. There are plenty of extra perks and comforts to make the most of your time on the train, as well as before and after.

There’s a dedicated ticket gate in London and Paris, meaning you don’t have to head for the train until ten minutes before departure, compared with the two hours you could be hanging around an airport.

If you’re the type of person who likes to arrive ahead of time, the Business Premier lounges in London and Paris are comfortable and and quiet, and a little taste of luxury. There’s a wide selection of drinks - alcoholic, soft and hot - snacks, magazines and free wi-fi.

When The Week travelled, Covid restrictions meant that food wasn’t being served on board, but Eurostar has reintroduced the service. The Business Premier menus on board were designed with Michelin-starred chef Raymond Blanc and are a three-course offering.

In his 2010 bestseller The Hare with Amber Eyes, the potter Edmund de Waal told the story of his mother’s family – the Ephrussis – through 264 Japanese netsuke (tiny ivory sculptures) that were bought by one of her forebears in Paris in the 1870s, said Allan Massie in The Scotsman. His marvellous new book is a companion piece to that volume, which brings to life another art-loving Jewish banking family who were their neighbours in Paris.

Hailing from Istanbul, the Camondos settled in the city in the 1860s, building a palatial home on the Rue de Monceau – then an enclave of the “haute juiverie” – which they filled with exquisite pieces. De Waal’s book takes the form of a series of imaginary letters to Count Moïse de Camondo, who inherited the property from his father in 1911, and who stipulated in his own will (he died in 1935) that it be preserved as a museum, which it still is. Those who enjoyed The Hare with Amber Eyes will “find equal interest and delight” in this work.

One of many cultivated Jewish families who flourished in Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Camondos were “fixtures of belle-époque society, at the centre of a constellation of writers and artists that included the Goncourt brothers, Renoir and Proust”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times. Moïse was patron of numerous societies, and made a point of collecting French art (in contrast to his father, who’d favoured Jewish and Ottoman artefacts). Yet neither his efforts to assimilate nor the family’s riches protected them from “the horrors of the 20th century”. Moïse’s son died in the First World War, and his daughter and grandchildren perished in the Nazi death camps. Perhaps because de Waal is less personally connected to the story, this book isn’t quite as successful as its predecessor; but it is a tender and sometimes moving meditation on “rootlessness and restitution, about how objects carry the past into the present”.

With its meticulous descriptions of the artefacts in the Musée Nissim de Camondo, it’s quite demanding to read – the “opposite of a page-turner”, said Laura Freeman in The Times. But readers who persevere will be richly rewarded: “De Waal has a way of looking at the world that surprises, delights and upends expectations.” It is also “beautifully produced”, said Gillian Tindall in the Literary Review: the text is interspersed with lavish colour illustrations which do full justice to de Waal’s subject. Reading it made me “long to” pay a visit to the “time-stalled home” in which the Camondo family lived.

Chatto & Windus 192pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99 (incl. p&p)

The Week Bookshop

To order this title or any other book in print, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk, or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835. Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm.

Craig Taylor is an “endlessly curious Canadian” journalist who is best known for his works of oral history, said Laura Pullman in The Sunday Times. In Return to Akenfield (2009), he captured the life of a Suffolk village, and two years later, in the widely praised Londoners, he did the same for the UK capital. And he interviewed more than 180 people, over six years, for this “beautifully woven tapestry” of New York. Spanning the city’s social pecking order, his subjects range from bankers and lawyers to a homeless man who “recycles cans to scrape by”. Along with uplifting accounts by artists and activists there are stories that highlight the city’s darker side: a car thief spills the secrets of his profession; a therapist reveals that “every client fantasises about escaping”. You are forced to conclude that for many New Yorkers, life there is unbearably relentless. If I’d read this book “before moving here, I’d have been more hesitant to get on the plane”.

Some of its most fascinating sections are about the super-rich, said Craig Brown in The Mail on Sunday. A nanny describes working for families where the children have their own chefs. “If you are nine and cavalier about having your own private jet, nothing is ever going to be exciting for you,” she notes. We learn of other children who lock themselves in the bathroom “because it’s the only place where there are no housekeepers, parents, tutors, drivers”. And there’s a dentist whose bond trader client was so stressed by his job that he’d ground his teeth into pegs. Seventy years ago, in a letter from New York, Dylan Thomas wrote that behind its “facade of speed and efficiency”, it contained “millions of little individuals... wrestling, in vain, with their own anxieties”. Taylor’s “amazing book” suggests that some things have not changed.

John Murray 432pp £25; The Week Bookshop £19.99

The Week Bookshop

To order this title or any other book in print, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk, or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835. Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm.

Katherine Heiny’s 2017 novel Standard Deviation – about an ill-matched married couple – was “to my mind one of the best, and funniest” of recent years, said India Knight in The Sunday Times. Her new one may be “even better”. It tells the story of Jane, a primary school teacher who moves to a small town in Michigan and begins dating “an exceptionally handsome woodworker”. He is perfect for her in just about every respect, except, as Jane discovers, for one: he has “slept with every sleepable-with woman in the county”. As someone whose “expectations are traditional”, Jane finds this increasingly troubling (though for the reader its effect is “cumulatively hilarious”). Weighty and tender – and at times “profoundly sad” – this is a book that “takes the tiny stuff of everyday life and makes it big and meaningful”.

On its surface this novel “exudes sitcom cosiness”, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer. Don’t be fooled: it is a work of “deadpan charm” that offers many “sharp truths” about small-town life. It’s like “Anne Tyler with added grunge”.

4th Estate 336pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

The Week Bookshop

To order this title or any other book in print, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk, or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835. Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm.

Being slapped with a fine is rarely a cause for celebration, but the mayor of Paris has described her “joy” after the city’s authorities were fined for employing too many women in senior positions.

France’s Public Service Ministry has ordered the Paris city hall to pay €90,000 (£81,000) for appointing 11 women but just five men to management roles in 2018 - a breach of a law passed to maintain a gender balance.

After being informed about the hefty penalty this week, Mayor Anne Hidalgo told a city council meeting: “I am happy to announce that we have been fined.”

France 24 reports that city hall “violated a rule dating to 2013” stipulating that one sex cannot account for more than 60% of nominations to senior positions.

The law “was aimed at getting women better access to top jobs in the civil service”, adds German newspaper Deutsche Welle.

But the Parisian authorities overshot the mark back in 2018, with women accounting for 69% of the top posts. “The management of the city hall has, all of a sudden, become far too feminist,” Hidalgo quipped after being fined for the breach.

She added that she would hand over the cheque to the government in person, accompanied by her deputy mayors and all of the other women working for her.

Adopting a more serious tone, Hidalgo described the fine as “obviously absurd, unfair, irresponsible and dangerous”. Women in France should be promoted with “vigour”, she said, because “the lag everywhere in France is still very great”.

Deutsche Welle reports that “currently, about 47% of all civil servants in senior positions at the Paris city hall are women”.

Amid widespread mockery of the fine, France’s public service minister, Amelie de Montchalin, tweeted that while the penalty had been retrospectively levied for 2018, the “absurd” rule had since been repealed.

Tens of thousands of people joined rallies in cities across France this weekend to pay tribute to a teacher murdered in Paris last week after showing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed to his pupils.

Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history teacher, was decapitated outside his secondary school in a northwestern suburb of the capital on Friday, in what President Emmanuel Macron has described as an “Islamist terrorist attack”. The knife-wielding killer - named as Abdullah Anzorov, an 18-year-old Russian-born man of Chechen descent - was shot dead by police after attacking officers called to the scene.

Yesterday, demonstrators carrying banners with messages including “no to totalitarianism of thought”, “I am a teacher” and “schools in mourning” gathered in towns and cities including Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Nantes, Marseille, Lille and Bordeaux.

The crowds chanted “freedom of expression, freedom to teach” and sang La Marseillaise, with some waving placards declaring “Je suis Samuel” - an echo of the “Je suis Charlie” slogan that sprung up following the 2015 attack on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

High-profile figures including Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and French Prime Minister Jean Castex joined a rally at the Place de la Republique in the capital. Castex later tweeted: “You do not scare us. We are not afraid. You will not divide us. We are France!”

Meanwhile, Macron “chaired a crisis meeting of ministers and security chiefs on Sunday night to discuss action to prevent attacks”, The Telegraph says. The president reportedly told ministers: “Islamists will not sleep peacefully in France. Fear will change sides.”

Following the meeting, the Elysee announced that security will be ramped up at schools and action taken to curb the activities of “organisations and individuals close to radicalised circles”. A national tribute to Paty is to be held on Wednesday, officials added.