Salut!

Farewell to blighted Blighty

"Please don't judge us on the facilities," said the amiable man at the Dover check-in booth. And I won't.

A lifelong obsession with arriving in good time for travel had delivered me to the port a ridiculous two-and-a-half hours before the time of my reserved ferry. Check-in was offering me a place on a much earlier but otherwise freight-only crossing and I was only too pleased to accept.

Love means ... French-style

It's already a day late but I could not resist reproducing this wonderful snapshot of the way French society see itself ...

A letter from Sri Lanka, stained by 65th birthday teardrops

Prabash Mendis at the tsunami memorial

Salut! has been neglected of late, starved of new content and indeed of readers. Here is the first written product of a 10-day visit to Sri Lanka disguised as a harmless tourist. It is taken from the website of The National, Abu Dhabi, which publishes the article tomorrow (Tuesday) in its print edition ...

Sixty-five years after Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain, the spring in the step of the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his supporters has turned to something of a swagger.

The recent history of the island, known as India's teardrop because of its shape and location off the southern tip of the subcontinent, helps to explain the self-satisfaction.

The deadly tsunami of 2004, when an estimated 40,000 Sri Lankans died, is not forgotten. But closer, now, to loyal minds is the defeat four-and-a-half years later of the Tamil Tigers, ending nearly three decades of bloody civil war.