In 1975, the UN invited member states to proclaim 8 March as an official holiday for women’s rights and world peace. Fat chance. Fifty years on, good luck with that. The UN has been shouting into the wind about the plight of millions of women since 1946. How sad that on 6 March 2023 the UN Commission said: ‘progress on women’s rights is vanishing including in countries such as Afghanistan, where women and girls have been, in effect, erased from public life’.

Among the photographs recording the horrific bombing of Odessa* is one of piled up sandbags protecting a statue.

It turns out, rather surprisingly, at least to the author, the statue commemorates the duke of Richelieu, called, affectionately in Odessa, as ‘our duke’.

Many folk who were born, grew up or live in Vendôme have never heard of Le Carillon de Vendôme the oldest (1420) known French children’s song.

Ardent Francophiles, the French speaking Windsor family has long been fascinated with France, especially the Châteaux of the Loire.

Nerds (me) love castles, especially those massive stone spiral staircases. For people of a certain age (me) they conjure up images of a sword brandishing, swashbuckling, Errol Flynn in those cheesy films.

The Treaty of Picquigny of 29 August 1475 was a momentous turning point. It brought to an end England’s conquest of France which had dragged on for a hundred and eighteen years.

When folk in Normandy quip William I civilised England, they tend to forget the Romans did it first.

What Louis XI wanted more than anything in the world was a son. Until he got one and indeed, after he got one, his daughter Anne was the next best thing. She was, he said, ‘The Least Foolish Woman In France’.