Andrew Hussey – Paris Seen by a Stranger – I first started reading Nairn’s Paris whilst drinking a beer in a café called ‘Chez Charly’ on the rue Raymond-Losserand in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, where I have lived for the past ten years. This isn’t the real name of the café but this is what ­locals call it in homage to ‘Charly’, a once-legendary previous owner of the place. It isn’t quite a dive but it isn’t quite as respectable as it seems from the outside, where passing tourists sit on tidy terrasses sipping coffee or drinking beer. Inside, on any given evening you are likely to come across a sprinkling of local small-time gangsters, mainly North-African or Portuguese, some elderly prostitutes and a former, now repentant drug dealer from somewhere in ­Eastern Europe whose cockney accent was acquired during several years doing time in English prisons. It’s the kind of place where you could easily imagine Ian Nairn enjoying the atmosphere, necking down a Leffe and giving his shy, diffident but always definitive views on his surroundings. In fact, as a quick glance at the back end of this book reveals, Ian Nairn had already been around here almost fifty years ago – if not to this particular zinc, but to this quartier, usually called le Village vii