Two months ago I was in Paris, enjoying a short holiday in a beautiful city that I first visited as a teenager. It was warm and sunny; I enjoyed a meal with a friend near Sacre Coeur and reflected on how well  it had worn over the years.

We went to the charming district of St Germain des Pres with its distinctive atmosphere of  fun and freedom.

Today Paris is a city in mourning as yet another terrorist atrocity turns death into a shared spectacle; ugly, needless, cruel and so very public. Raw grief unites humanity as nothing else; the stunned, dazed, stupefied expressions of ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances  . . .

“Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”