Salut!

Irène Némirovsky, tragic heroine of wartime French literature: a daughter's legacy

What dads will do for their daughters. An unpaid gig, helping elder one give a little push to the DVD release of the film Suite Française, led to today's appearance, at Huffington Post, of this retrospective piece that is, in large part, about another daughter, not mine but Irène Némirovsky's ...

More than 60 years on from the Fall of Paris, the France of 2004 was unrecognisable from the country that had spent much of the post-war period in self-denial of its role in the Holocaust.

Quebec or Mick Jagger: why is Ronnie Wood 'roi de la poutine'?

Credit: Jonathunder

Perhaps I did not expect to find a review of the Rolling Stones, closing their North American tour in Quebec, in Le Figaro. Something for the really old readers, I suppose.

But even less did I expect, in such a review, to see references to an indigestible-sounding Quebecois dish known as poutine. Or to learn that Mick Jagger uses "Le Roi de la Poutine" it as a nickname for the guitarist Ronnie Wood.

Forget Anglo/French cultural division. What about green ink and internet trolls?

One useful rule of journalism holds that the journalist should always engage with the readers. If someone takes the trouble to write - it used to be letters but is more likely now to be a tweet or e-mail - you owe him or her the courtesy of a reply.

Sir Max Hastings, when my editor at the Telegraph though not yet a sir, made it an obligation and threatened to be "very unpleasant" towards any member of staff who failed to observe it.

Île Saint-Honorat: not far from the Côte d'Azur's madding crowd

Another look at places Off the Beaten Path in France brings you the small island of Saint-Honorat, a 15-minute boat shuttle from the little ferry port of Cannes and home since the 5th century to a community of wine-growing monks.

Just 1.5km long and 400m wide, the isle is a doddle to cover on foot in a short visit and, despite its popularity as a serene haven from the Croisette, crowd-free and relaxing. It might even work for you if the bustle of its larger neighbour, Sainte-Marguerite - see this report from a previous visit which even inspired a little Salut! competition - just seems too much.

Choupette, fur and the rights and far right wrongs of Brigitte Bardot

In the middle of a difficult week, I was asked to profile Brigitte Bardot because she'd written to a cat, albeit a famous one. Monsieur et Madame Salut are, in broad geographical terms, BB's neighbours, if a few miles apart and tending to keep ourselves to ourselves. This* is what I made of my subject, Bardot not Choupette ...

Echoes of a lost pop music press as NME decides to busk for free

Memories were stirred by the rather sad news that NME - which was still New Musical Express when I first started reading it - is to become a freesheet from September.

Britain's once-mighty pop weekly boldly says it is kicking down the doors to the future. But it's hard to escape the underlying statistics - sales down from 75,000 only 10 years ago to a meagre 15,000 now. It once sold more than 200,000 weekly, though today's online presence reaches seven million users a month.

International Kissing Day: Le Baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville's Irish connection

I would not have known, but Var-Matin helped me out of my ignorance. Today is International Kissing Day. I await International Old Git Day with impatience but feel it appropriate, for now, to embrace the spirit of the day. It is, on my count, six years since Salut! returned to one of its favoured themes, Le Baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville, or the young couple's exhilarating clinch outside the city hall of Paris. So here's another outing for the most recent item published here (see http://www.francesalut.com/2009/02/one-kiss-one-dream.html for some entertaining comments from the readers' Class of 2009) ...

The Tour de France: 112 years, 102 tournaments and the wheels keep turning

The first Tour de France, 1903

My own cycling career was short and undistinguished. Fed up with straight handle bars when all the other lads had dropped ones, I simply converted my bike by changing the handlebars. It wasn't a roaring success but the bike got me about. The last time I rode, on the Varois island of Porquerolles, several years ago, was also the first time since boyhood. It may be too late to change ...

Despite the long, dark shadow cast by the doping scandal that led to the US cyclist Lance Armstrong being stripped of his seven titles, the Tour de France continues to live up to its own extravagant billing.

It calls itself the “greatest free show on the planet” and the curtain rises today on the 102nd performance.

Jean-Claude Juncker and Greek tragedies: when telling the truth is a moveable feast

Jean-Claude Juncker, who rose from modest origins to become the ultimate Eurocrat, has a key role in the battle to save Greece from itself or, according to taste, impose impossibly cruel conditions for salvation on a struggling nation. Here's my profile* of the steelworker's son for whom the need to tell the truth is open to debate ...

With a friend like Jean-Claude Juncker, it might be asked, what possible need does Europe have of enemies?

'What did the silly old weaselbag say?' A fond farewell to Guy Rais

Guy Rais, with another former Telegraph colleague, Wendy Holden, now a successful author

Stop Press: Guy Rais deserved an outstanding obituary and it now appears (bravo David Twiston Davies, its author) at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11713530/Guy-Rais-journalist-obituary.html. Not all the comments you see below were sent to Salut!, but appeared at Facebook, in e-mails or - in one case - at the Telegraph site. I hope their authors agree it was fitting to "import" as many as possible.

Media being part of Salut!'s beat, no apology is necessary for an item that will probably interest only journalists, along with any stray readers who happened for one reason or another to come across my friend and former colleague Guy Rais, who died yesterday at the wonderful old age of 95. I have added, I hope without objection, some of the tributes I have seen elsewhere ...