Jess Signut who hails from Florida says of herself : “My parents were travelers since before I was born. Even in the womb, I was able to travel all over the place! Boy, did things NOT change as I grew older! Knowing there’s more to the world than the bubble I live in made […]
These days heroes are few and far between. I have since 2011 been writing about the two French aviators, Nungesser and Coli, who should be in the history books as heroes, but are practically unknown outside of aviation circles. Charles Eugène Jules Marie Nungesser (35) and François Coli (46) left Paris’s Le Bourget Airport […]
How many times have I not heard complaints about how rude the French are? I have stopped counting, but just this past Christmas it was said to me: “I don’t think that the French like tourists.” This was said, by the way, by someone who visits Paris once each year, so my question is, […]
Prostitutes: one sees them in certain areas of Paris be it broad daylight or in the dark of night. Ask any Parisian (male or female from the age of 14 or 15) which areas these are and you will be told. I am therefore not going to name them. There are 20,000 prostitutes in France. […]
You may think that the First World War (Great War) is too far into the past to interest you: that it is for veterans of wars, for historians, for lecturers and teachers, for researchers, for biographers, for the old and the aging. No! Believe me, visiting the Great War Museum – Le Musée de […]
In 1942 France having capitulated to Nazi Germany and the Germans occupying the country a vicious Frenchman began killing Jews. This Frenchman was a medical doctor – Dr Marcel Petiot. He sold an escape route to Jews who wished to escape the Nazis – being arrested and then deported to concentration and death […]
Wandering through the rooms of the Nissim de Camonda Museum – Musée Nissim de Camondo – I was thinking if there is such a thing as a haunted house, then this house should be haunted. I did not however see any ghosts in this house, but its history did hang over its rooms […]
Just 9.4 km (5.8 miles) north of Paris is the town of Saint Denis or as we here in France say the ‘commune’ of Saint Denis. What we mean is that it is independent of other towns in France as it has its own municipality. You can read further about our communes. I will quickly […]
I wrote a piece for the website crimemagazine dot com about the Islamist terrorists attacks in Paris. I start my piece as follows: Parisians woke on the morning of Wednesday, January 7, 2015, to an icy fog descending over the rooftops. Two days previously, on Monday, the children had returned to school after the […]
If you find nothing to see or do in Paris, then you should make an appointment with a shrink. And yes, I have had the experience of visitors to Paris telling me that they are bored because there is nothing to see or do in Paris! However, let us ignore them. In 2013 (latest […]
In 2012 I wrote an article for crimemagazine dot com about the murder of the honeymooning bride Annie Dewani in Cape Town, South Africa. Her husband, Shrien Dewani, was accused of having organised her killing in what was to look like a carjacking. The case against him has been thrown out and he is now […]
On Monday, August 21, 1911, a man walked from the Louvre carrying the Mona Lisa. He had stolen it. Incredible? Can’t happen? Today, it probably won’t happen, but in 1911 it did. I wrote about it for crimemagazine.com in 2012 and you can read my article when you click on the link. Here though […]
Many versions of who had created the Je suis Charlie slogan are going about. The slogan’s creator is Joachim Roncin, an artist and music journalist with the free magazine ‘Stylist’. Joachim created the slogan – three words in white and grey on a black background – almost immediately after the Wednesday, January 7th massacre […]
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It is a sad fact that the brutal and ugly face of anti-Semitism is being seen in France. However, let me make it clear immediately that I am not saying that the French are anti-Semites. What I am going to tell you is that a small number of people living in France are anti-Semites, but […]
