Ronald Searle in Heaven and Hell

The Paris Sketchbook by Kaye Webb, who wrote the text, and her husband Ronald Searle (above), who drew the pictures, was first published in 1950. It is Paris in the spring, a record of the holiday the English couple spent there in May that year—after the freezing April rains. During the Covid lockdowns their dusty black-covered book on my shelves opened a nostalgic dream world of croissants and travel and was a reminder to rewatch Maigret (the Bruno Cremer version).

In 1950 it was a good time to visit Paris—no socialist mayor destroying the streets and monuments, no piles of garbage, no drugs and violence, no terrorism. No cars or cafés are burning in the Champs-Élysées. Frenchmen wear berets, Juliette Greco is singing in Saint Germain, fishermen dangle lines in the Seine, waiters with supercilious Searle noses sniff the air for customers, old ladies in hats with feathers take coffee and cakes on café terraces. Florid buildings lean eagerly and precariously forward or…