thisisguernsey.com

FOUR months to go and campaigning is already well under way in the UK’s general election. It’s likely to end up in the history books as a bigger groundbreaker than most, the favourite date for the vote, coinciding with the council elections, being 6 May.

For seven years he has occupied this column as a Guernsey Press correspondent. Now former Elizabeth College pupil and teacher Bruce Parker is taking on a new challenge – compiling a history of the school. And he is hoping that readers can help.

Time was when it would have been hard to have a bad meal there, but now it seems it’s increasingly difficult to find a good one. France, traditionally renowned for its food and wine, is in the culinary doldrums. Could it be a case of fish and chips triumphing over foie gras?

SPRING … and so to Paris. Is there any city in the world more written about, more painted, more photographed, more visited or more famous?

It’s the home of ‘Cezanne’s mountains’ and has never been far from the spotlight since the ‘father of modern art’ immortalised Aix-en-Provence on canvas.  But a joint exhibition featuring his work and Picasso’s has it poised to attract even more attention, as our France correspondent reports…

Russian oligarchs are moving in on the Cote d’Azur, with one spending a cool £392m. on a villa and another offering £80m. to divert a railway line that was bothering him. But they’re not the first of their kind to use the place as a playground.

Gone are the days when rose wine was naff. Now the French can’t get enough of it, and we’re  all following suit. And that’s good news for our near neighbours, whose wine industry has been in the doldrums…

Many European voters are far from happy – particularly when it comes to their money being wasted. But it is they who ultimately have control, as France correspondent Bruce Parker reports.