Patrick O’Connor
Notes From the Underground
Metrostop Paris: History from the City’s Heart
By Gregor Dallas
John Murray 256pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
One has only to glance at the map of the Paris Métro to evoke a memory of the smells and noises in that confusing maze of lines and stations. The sound of the buzzer just before the doors close, the mixture of residual soot, cleaning fluid, Gauloises (no more), and often comfortingly warm air, all combine to win the traveller's affection. After a while you learn to try to avoid changing at Châtelet (better to get out and walk). It took the authorities decades to change the name of the Louvre stop, so that tourists ceased getting off there – only to find the museum entrance was half a mile up the road. (Palais Royal–Musée du Louvre is the correctly named one now.)
What, though, of those mysterious names that adorn dozens of stops? Who, what, were they? Some are battles – Austerlitz, Iéna, Bir-Hakeim, Wagram. A few authors have their own stations – Emile Zola, Voltaire, Goncourt, Anatole France – but who knows readily of La Motte Picquet–Grenelle, or Malakoff–Plateau de Vanves,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/