Salut!

From Bombay and Agidir to the Olympics, with an Agnel in disguise

Sunshine, palm trees, the film festival ... and occasional rain

Most of us, I suppose, have minor horror stories of trying to deal with customers services departments that have been relocated to far-off places where the staff may be charming and willing to help but sometimes struggle to understand or make themselves understood.

French apologies: one given (to Jews), another to come (to Algeria)

What was this gendarme, at Drancy, thinking? Image: German federal archive via Wikipedia

Jacques Chirac, old rogue that he is, rightly gets a lion's share of the credit for France's belated recognition of its crimes against Jews during Nazi occupation.

From Iran to France: no longer without his children

Images: Amy Leang

When I read Not Without My Daughter some years ago, I initially took at face value Betty Mahmoody's account of fleeing with her child from a tyrannical marriage to an Iranian. The husband's completely different version came later and, whether true or false, provided a useful reminder that most disputes have two sides.

France has been intrigued by the custody battle that ended last month with the return to a French schoolteacher, Dany Laurent, of his two children, now aged 12 and nine, six years after their Iranian mother illegally took them to her home country. I have spoken to him about his long battle and the new one just starting, to rebuild his relationship with the children and theirs with France.

The similarities between the two cases are superficial but sufficient for the French media to present the Laurent affair in Not Without My Children terms. There is bound to be a Fatemah Ghanbapour side of this story, too, though court decisions in both France and Iran leave little doubt that she acted in defiance of the law. The history of Dany Laurent's fight to be reunited with his children is, all the same, a remarkable one, as readers of The National*, Abu Dhabi will have seen from my article today. Amy Leang, my consoeur**, took the photos and both she and Dany Laurent approved my use of them here ...

Tipping tips: stingy French, ripoff Brits and liberty-taking Americans

Image: Bradley Gordon

What is the least necessary question one diner can ask another in a French restaurant when the bill arrives? You guessed. "Is service included?"

Service is automatically included in France. This is reasonably assumed to be so well known that the words service compris no longer appear as routinely as they once did on the bill.

The Max Hastings diet: greens, Ryvita, abundant wine - and it works

Port, good wine, champagne are the liquid components of the Max Hastings diet that I remember from when he was the editor of The Daily Telegraph and I was a longish way down the Telegraph pole.