Salut!

A Middleton banquet chez Lord & Lady Brexit as royals invade Bormes-les-Mimosas

 

 

 

 

Once I'd turned my back, the royals arrived. Wills and Kate, their three children, her sister Pippa and their parents, all present in the beautiful village of Bormes-les-Mimosas for the wedding of the Middleton brother James to his French fiancée, Alizée Thevenet, at the little town hall a mile or so up the road from us.

Then it was on to Chateau Léoube, set in a glorious vineyard on the coast and offering a stunning private beach. Plenty of Léoube's vaunted rosé wine was reportedly quaffed by guests. Our invitations, it seems, were lost in the post.

 

The Bataclan and terraces, death-cult ISIS killers and Hasna Ait Boulahcen, a woman drawn into their terrorist web

I loathe everything about what Hasna Ait Boulahcen became, a woman willing to consort and hide with terrorists after the murderous Paris attacks of 2015. But I recognise the horrendous reality of her childhood and youth and how, along with a gullible nature, it helped to propel her towards a choice that involved such despicable actions (no actual terrorist deed but a willingness to find refuge for mass killers). This is how I described for The National a film, premiered today in Venice, depicting her life ... I once again thank my editors for permission to reproduce it here

Hasna Ait Boulahcen

As the trial started of the alleged surviving member and accomplices of the ISIS gang that murdered 130 people across Paris in 2015, a cinema depiction of the life of a woman drawn into the terrorists’ web had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday.

Hasna Ait Boulahcen, 26, was mistakenly labelled Europe’s first female suicide bomber when she was killed in a blast at a flat in the Parisian suburbs besieged by police three days after attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, restaurants and bars, and an international football game at the Stade de France.