Paris attacks tear at heartstrings in many ways

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.