Author: sjohns
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Catsuited, rebooted
Veteran French director Olivier Assayas has spun his cult 90s film Irma Vep into a sexy, funny and dizzyingly multilayered TV series…
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REVIEW Anthologie bilingue de la poésie latine
Modern anthologies of Latin poetry are rare birds, but for historical span alone, number 652 in Gallimard’s prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade must be unique…
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REVIEW Paris dans l’oeil de ses habitants
As anyone who follows one of its social media accounts will know, Paris ZigZag is a stylish and authoritative guide to the French capital’s culture and history…
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REVIEW The House of Fragile Things
The recent announcement that the Musée d’Orsay is to return a Klimt to the heirs of its Jewish owner shows how much the plunder of art by the Nazis is a live issue even today…
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REVIEW Invisible ink
A private eye tries to trace a missing woman. But in what sense is she missing? And why does the case have such a hold on him, years later?
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REVIEW French Chateau Style
At one end of the château scale are A-listers like Versailles and Fontainebleau; towards the other, a multitude of lesser-known but no less charismatic properties…
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REVIEW The Vanished Collection
“I love riddles and mysteries”, writes the heroine of this real-life detective story, and the one she sets out to solve leads deep into a tangle of European and family histories…
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REVIEW The French Royal Wardrobe
No, not a book about a large cupboard: the Hôtel de la Marine, on place de la Concorde in Paris is a storage facility on an altogether different scale…
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REVIEW Timeless Paris
They could just as easily have called it Time Travel Paris. This beautiful book is a portal into the past, via 18 shops and museums…
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REVIEW Chanson
“For me for-midaaable…” Cool cat cover star Charles Aznavour sets the tone for this sleek hardback survey of France’s smokiest musical genre…