Well, what a year it has been! We thought 2020 was bad enough, with the arrival of a deadly pandemic that forced us all into not one, but THREE lockdowns.
But there was light at the end of the tunnel: the game-changing, miraculous vaccines, which ensured a way out of the darkness we have endured for almost two years. And this time we even managed to save Christmas — hurrah!
Throughout it all, there were those who made us glad
What is the mood in Paris? No better season than autumn to find out. The Salon d’Automne was the annual exhibition which launched Cubism and, a century later, we still see this most beautiful of cities through the eyes of its revolutionary painters.
And taste it through chefs. In Anthony Bourdain’s favourite bistro in Belleville, a fabulous caricature of Frenchness, I sit next to a corpulent local noisily enjoying a joue de cochon. Hearing our English, he shakes his head:
