pub.' Cole Porter made April the city's month. Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire gave it the sheen of musical romance for cinema audiences around the globe. Humphrey Bogart comforted Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca by assuring her, `We'll always have Paris.' Even Hitler had to admit that, while levelling London or Moscow would not have disturbed his peace of mind, he would have been greatly pained to have had to destroy the capital of France. Not to be outdone, other cities, towns and regions have attracted their stars, too. The still two-eared Van Gogh drew his inspiration from Provence. Salvador Dal proclaimed Perpignan station to be the centre of the Universe. Medieval popes took up residence in Avignon. Deng Xiaoping worked in a provincial factory which branded him `unsuitable for re-employment'. Chopin made beautiful music with George Sand in the dank flatlands of the centre. Robert Louis Stevenson trekked through the Cvennes on a donkey. Madonna named her daughter after the pilgrimage shrine of Lourdes, and Yul Brynner's ashes were laid to rest in a monastery in the Loire Valley. As for the Cte d'Azur, Scott Fitzgerald's `pleasant shore of the Riviera' became such a mecca for the smart set of the 1920s that they could believe they had invented it; later, Somerset Maugham held lugubrious court in his villa at Cap Ferrat; and Graham Greene denounced the local political mafia as he saw out his last years in one of the less fashionable towns of the coastline. For all the rivalry from across the Channel and from the New World, France's food still sets the international benchmark (despite such aberrations as foie gras sushi). The world is ready to buy everrising prices for the great Bordeaux and Burgundy wines, not to mention the export of 100 million bottles of champagne a year. Though it has become fashionable to decry the static nature of French cooking, the criticism is, for the most part, misplaced since it consists of taking France...
