Time Out in Paris

The Insider’s Guide to Paris, illustrated here in best comic postcard style in 1984. This came at the tail end of Britain’s Golden Age of Editorial Illustration. Later in the decade art editors increasingly favoured photographic or computer generated images and illustration began to resemble an endangered species. Twenty-five years later the clichés endure. Les rosbifs with their red complexions, looking the worse for drink, sample the delights of café life. We travel to Paris this afternoon via Eurostar but there’s little chance of this scene being repeated thanks to the winter freeze and the new, slim-line pound. An even greater incentive to seek out the less frequented districts of the city in search of vrai Paris.