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Brontë in Paris; pity poor Haworth

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My news from Paris is that on Jan 30 this cultural jewel, a tiny manuscript written by a youthful Charlotte Brontë in 1830, will go on public display for the first time.

That is an awful long time for the public to have had to wait. So it is good to be able to add that there is a geographical bonus: there are far worse places to find yourself on a winter's day than the vicinity of 222 Boulevard Saint-Germain.

The French children at the front line in newspapers' battle for survival

This is territory I have covered at Salut! before. But the success of a group of newspapers for children is not only fascinating in itself; by adding an otherwise imperilled habit - reading the printed page - to the lives of the young, it may offer the slimmest ray of hope for those producing daily publications ...

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin the story of a group of children's newspapers that stands out as a rare success story for the French press.

François Dufour, a 50-year-old bundle of energy and enterprise, is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of three dailies aimed at readers aged seven to 17. He specialises in bold headlines, eye-catching illustration and lots of reader involvement, from film and book reviews to guest stints in the editor's chair.

And the recipe works. Aided by government-subsidised postal rates for dailies, the newspapers - Le Petit Quotidien (for children aged seven to 10), Mon Quotidien (10-14) and L'Actu (14-17) - have a combined circulation of 150,000. All sales are by subscription and readership has been steady for six years.

Profits are modest - €200,000-300,000 euros a year - but Mr Dufour (pictured, below) points out that all other French national dailies, with the exception of the sports newspaper L'Equipe, make losses. In a troubled market, L'Actu and its stablemates occupy a haven of commercial tranquillity.

Schools also recognise the newspapers' value as classroom aids. Extra copies are ordered when special editions devote extensive coverage to major news events or international days dedicated to women or fighting racism.

"These are useful educational tools and can form part of school projects," said Daniel Labaquere, a primary school teacher and official of the teaching union SNUipp. "But just as there is a crisis in the press, there is a crisis in reading. Newspapers written in clear, straightforward language and presented so the reader finds them easy to follow help children understand the importance of being informed of the news."

The success has even prompted international expansion. An Arabic version of Le Petit Quotidien was launched under licence in Qatar in November, with 10,000 copies delivered five days a week to schools in and around the capital, Doha. A weekly digest of Mon Quotidien also appears in a leading Swiss newspaper.

Content in the first Qatar editions ranged from news of a football friendly between Brazil and Argentina in Doha to a story about tortoises. "Pretty much the same editorial line applies as with our French editions," Mr Dufour (pictured) said. "We survey them all the time and while there is plenty of serious material - the Fukushima nuclear disaster or the build-up of North African immigrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa - we're happy to put an animal story on page one."

A glance at 2011 issues of the French titles bears witness to his taste for detailed, graphic treatment of subjects as diverse as Tutankhamun, text messaging and the Occupy movement (known in French as les indignés).

M Dufour was attending a conference in New York when Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested on sex charges. He dropped everything to report on the case for the editions serving the two older age groups, also achieving fleeting renown in France for his minute-by-minute tweets from the courtroom.

A third of readers – typically parents who buy no mainstream newspapers – pay extra for a weekly supplement in English.

So is there scope for the idea to cross the Channel and reach a young British readership? After all, the weekly Children’s Newspaper was published for an impressive 46 years until 1965 and The Sunday Times incorporated Funday Times, with its toy reviews, celebrity interviews and comic strips, from 1989 to 2006.

Sixteen years after launching Mon Quotidien and confounding sceptics, Mr Dufour feels a market exists in the UK, too, but remains unsure whether industry figures will give him the backing he needs. “I’ve pitched to friends in the industry and it’s gone no further,” he says. “One told me, ‘it’s a good idea but will never be among our top 10 priorities’.”

* Adapted from my occasional column in the Times Educational Supplement.

A Corus angel: we've overcharged you by £86. Care for a drink?'

On Santa duty with granddaughter Maya

Being asked to pay the earth in hotels and restaurants has become commonplace on both sides of the Channel. Here's an innocent example and how it was put right ...

The time of year has come again for Salut! to wish all its readers - and readers of the other sites, Salut! Sunderland
Salut! Live and Salut! North, a hearty Joyeuses fêtes.

The staff of the Corus Hotel off the Bayswater Road in London deserve a special mention. Just don't say a word to the people at Drink Aware.

Never send a man shopping, even to Tesco

Image: Gene Hunt

The instructions were simple enough: buy a family-sized lasagne, a feather duster and some yoghurts (not petits filous).

So simple that they instructions were heard and faultlessly understood: family-sized lasagne, a feather duster and petits filous (not yoghurts).

Anglo-French discord: frogs hoppng mad at overcooked rosbifs

Francois Schnell

We've all been at it, or at least Kim Willsher in The Observer, Henry Samuel in the Telegraph and I (plus, doubtless, a few others) have. When the entente, as The National's sub-editor had it above my piece last week, grows a little less cordiale ...

'Victoria Peckham'

The fierce row between Britain and France over ways of solving Europe's debt crisis has revived the long-held and deep-seated animosity that lurks beneath the surface of their relationship.

Chirac's disgrace, my slight distaste

Alone among Englishmen, I suspect, I feel a spot of sympathy for old Jacques Chirac, given a two-year suspended sentence today for running a corrupt system of bogus jobs for political cronies when he was mayor of Paris.

I never shared the general feeling of dislike, even hatred, that les rosbifs were meant to harbour towards the head frog.

On the skids: BMW's fate sealed with a touch of Molière

On a quick check, my old BMW had travelled the equivalent of nearly 11-and-a-half round trips between London and Bangkok, only about 45,000 miles short of the distance from Earth to the Moon.

It has churned up autoroute kilometres in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK. It may have popped over the Italian and Spanish borders. It almost died once on the road to Honfleur after a certain individual checked the oil at the start of the journey but neglected to put the oil cap back on.