Salut!

Saint-Martin-Vesubie's homage to Hervé Gourdel

Water from the mountains courses down a channel in rue Cagnoli, the narrow. sloping street that forms the old heart of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, an Alpine town Hervé Gourdel knew so well.

Muslims saying Non to barbarity

Last night, French TV - M8 - showed a young couple, Anthony and Sabrina, who had decided to leave home in Orléans and hook up with Islamic State. Not only that, they'd taken their three-year-old boy with them. "Anthony's doing his training," Sabrina told her mother from the conflict zone as if calling home for a chat from a package holiday. "Training for what?" "In sport ... as a mujahideen." But if not every Muslim in the West feels a shiver of disgust at what IS does in the name of Islam, plenty do. This, from The National*, tells part of their story ...

The cruel end of Hervé Gourdel and how to handle disillusioned jihadists

Learn more about Hervé Gourdel's activities, and see his photography, at http://www.hervegourdel.com/

When I wrote this comment piece for The National*, offering qualified support to the idea of re-integrating returning, repentant jihadists provided their involvement had stopped short of violent crime, Hervé Gourdel was the subject of a demand from his Islamic State-allied captors in Algeria that France should halt air strikes in northern Iraq if it wanted to save his life. France held firm and M Gourdel was murdered. A much-loved and honourable man, who lived for the mountains and who was due to share his passion and expertise with an Algerian group, was butchered by merciless fanatics with no honour, no courage and no humanity.

I know Saint-Martin-Vésubie, the beautiful village where he ran Escapade, a centre for mountain guides, set in the Alpes-Maritimes 90 minutes north of Nice. I offer my solidarity and sympathy to his family, friends and fellow mountaineers, hikers and guides. And yet, while I can see why others would disagree, I would not alter a word of the piece that follows ...

Welcome to France: rich Air France strikers, arsonists with platforms, jihadists with air miles

Far too low down some news bulletins I heard today was the plight of Hervé Gourdel, by all accounts a good, kind and decent man kidnapped and threatened with murder at the start of a hiking trip to Algeria by fanatics linked to Islamic State. The 10th day of the lamentable Air France pilots' strike, and the incredible mess made of arresting three French jihadist suspects, had taken priority ...

Brigitte Bardot: still making waves at 80

Whether it's supporting dodgy right-wing politics, firing off letters to the mayor of Saint-Tropez about the "celebrity villa cruises" that invade her privacy or engaging in her fierce war against animal cruelty, Brigitte Bardot retains the capacity to rise above the parapet and make sure she's heard. On Sunday, she will be 80. Tonight, she gives a rare interview, to every other Frenchwoman's favourite newscaster, Laurent Delahousse, on France 2. Salut! wishes BB bon anniversaire pour dimanche - even though the late update is I have now seen the interview and nearly choked on my coffee as she heaped fulsome praise on Marine Le Pen - and reproduces this item from four years ago ....

Locomotion's birthday party, glorious railway history and home truths from County Durham

One of the enjoyable things about being an editor, even of a tinpot little website, is that you get to hand out work to others. Pete Sixsmith being better placed to report on events in our shared home town, since he lives there and I am currently 1,722.8km away, he was duly dispatched to the town's offshoot of the National Railway Museum. The assignment produced this memorable account ...

Gérard Depardieu and a tallish tale of drinking

Dragging myself away from the televised press conference by François Hollande was not too hard to do. Very Frenchly, there was long speech from him, then early questions that also sounded like speeches followed by more long speeches in the president's replies. So let us consider instead that elderly hell-raiser Gérard Depardieu's drinking habits ...

A few years ago, Gérard Depardieu said he used to drink four or five bottles of wine a day but had cut down.

Now, we hear what one man means by cutting down: he talks of downing up to 14. The count seems to include a full bottle of pastis, a fair amount of champagne and some vodka or whisky or both. But who's to know for sure?

Unappetising end to the season: Le Lavandou peut mieux faire

The beaches are emptying, bars are less likely to offer entertainment and the streets are deserted compared with only a week ago.

What seemed like a busy late season has suddenly gone quiet, at least in Le Lavandou. Sainte-Maxime was a little more lively and I am sure the bigger resorts of the French Riviera will be, too. But if the tourism industry was counting on a bumper end to the season, it may be disappointed.

Rising above Anjem Choudary's grotesque life view to defend Islam

Did The Observer perform a useful service by devoting two full pages, plus narrow strips of continuing text on the next two pages, and four huge portraits by its photographer, to Anjem Choudary's extraordinary apologia for the primitive world view of the Islamic State?

Or should we admit, however reluctantly if we are fervent believers in the freedom of expression with only common sense limits, that the the time has come to deny such prominent platforms to champions of unmitigated evil?

Photos du weekend: one's back garden, not one's mode of transport

As a lazy, half-hearted republican, I naturally wouldn't be caught paying to get into Buckingham Palace. But we all have lapses. Sometimes it is useful to gain an insight into the lives of royalty ("seeing how the enemy lives" would overstate the intensity of my feelings).

You can easily gain that insight in France, too, without needing still to have the royalty. But the French went too far in choosing how to rid themselves of theirs; I'd just take away the wealth and privilege and put them to work in humdrum jobs.