It is the ideal of candidates' speeches and the idyll envied by visitors. Twinkling in the spring sun, even the banlieue housing estates -- home to the 2005 riots -- look less grim, enfolded into the rolling landscape with rivers and village churches. You can see this from pictures that I snapped yesterday, flying around Paris and Normandy from Moisselles, the grass airfield tucked into the northern suburbs, where my elderly aeroplane is based. ...
