I was in Paris for a meeting of the Franco-British Council and escaped for a few moments to find open the Church of St Roch in the Rue St Honore, near the British Embassy.

The interior is, as usual for the state maintained French churches, dowdy and neglected. There are some frescoes (badly lit), from the nineteenth century, but someone has had the bright idea of taking brightly illuminated slides of them and they are a revelation. There’s a wonderful scene of a country funeral. Everyone looks pretty miserable, but the toddler of the family is unconscious of all this and smiling happily – an allegory for the fact that life goes on.