The Paris Sketchbook by Kaye Webb, who wrote the text, and her husband Ronald Searle, 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,…