I lived in Paris for five happy years in the 1980s - I met my wife there, my eldest daughter was born there, and I made many French friends with whom I still remain in contact.

Like many a foreign resident of Paris, I grew in turn to be charmed and irked by the everyday life in Paris, so different from my native London.

Pluses were - and still are - the attractions of a city undamaged by wartime bombing, its stunning architecture a heady backdrop to the everyday life of caf?? society, the inviolable routine of lunch, and the correct emphasis placed by the French on what they call la qualite de vie, or the quality of life.