The glory of Paris has long past

A reader’s inquiry as to why I think Paris belongs to yesterday (12 August) has me remembering times past. When did the party end? According to many night owls it was when the ‘Queen of the Night’, Regine, shut down her club New Jimmy’z and moved to London in the 1970s, where she flopped. Others believe it was ‘les événements de soixante-huit’, the student-worker revolt against De Gaulle that did Paris in. Certainly, any way one looks at it, the events of 1968 did signal that the party was over; and it has stayed over ever since.

Mind you, the high jinks had been waning for some time. I first arrived in Paris as a tennis player in 1957, but moved permanently to the City of Light on November 11 1958, Poppy Day. The place was jumping. It was rich and brightly lit, and the people were prosperous.

Sure, the Frogs were Frogs: xenophobic, ungenerous, suspicious and intellectually superior.