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How slowing down makes you love life in France
Columnist Cynthia Spillman examines the surprising benefits of taking it easy
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The battle between old and new France is now impossible to ignore
Columnist Nabila Ramdani argues that the colonial mindset is still very strong in a country looking to the past
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France’s speed cameras are infuriating – and that’s why they keep getting vandalised
Columnist Samantha David says the devices seem designed to catch drivers out
Boney of contention
We must not allow history to become a sourcebook for theme park designers ( Napoleon Bonapark, page 5). We make a mistake if we plunder it merely for entertainment.
If we let a figure like Napoleon – as controversial now as he was in his day – become a caricature hero we may as well forget about history offering valuable lessons.
Napoleon was many things: brilliant general, enlightened despot, dictator, megalomaniac, disseminator of humanitarian European values, genius, flawed man. It is easy to romanticise him but we should never do it in such a way that we forget the reality of the man and become incapable of distinguishing his successes from his failure. Simple he most certainly was not.
